


Kaleidoscope

by taormina



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, College AU, Fluff, Humor, M/M, So Much Touching, robbie is mentioned from time to time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taormina/pseuds/taormina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. At Fine Arts College, Gary is the best student in his Music History class — but he’s rubbish at everything else. It’s a good thing he has a cute classmate who’s willing to help him get better at “drawing” . . .</p><p>Takes place in the 90s (year not specified). The boys are 18/19.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Hypnotize Me Like No Other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First chapter of my new TT fic, yay! I'm still editing the other chapters so I'm not sure when this will be updated but keep your eyes peeled. 
> 
> Also, just a chapter specific warning: this chapter contains some smoking.

Rob was right, he should’ve just gone to that stupid band audition with him. If he had, he might not be trying to sneak out of his dorm room in the middle of the night. Honestly, what was he thinking, enrolling into bloody art school with only two half-finished song demos and no good artworks to his name?

Gary almost bumped his head against the ceiling as he tried to get off his bunk bed as quietly as possible. The second to last step creaked, and he stared at his Smash Hits poster as he waited. It was a collage of various Smash Hits covers over the years; a reminder that he, too, could make it big if he worked hard enough.

Jason moaned in his sleep and turned over. His breathing sounded as steady as it did a minute ago. So far so good.

Gary’s naked feet finally hit the floor. He looked for his clothes on the floor (Jason’s were all neatly tidied away in a drawer) and got dressed in the dark. This wasn’t easy. Gary reckoned he probably had his shirt on the wrong way round, and his trousers felt suspiciously tight, but it had to do. If he got caught, he’d rather not be in his pyjamas.

He pulled his paper-filled portfolio case from underneath a cupboard, shoved a couple of pens and brushes into his trouser pockets and left.

He came back to his room five seconds later because he’d forgotten to put his shoes on. _Typical_.

If he had to summarize tonight with a song, he’d write something instrumental. Those were always his favourite assignments, when they were given a random mood or prompt and were told to return with a three-minute pop song the next day. He was good at it, too: last week, he wrote a short song about the royal family and got top marks.

Music was the only thing at this godforsaken place he was good at.

Tonight, Gary imagined himself walking the length of the empty school corridors with the Mission Impossible theme tune playing in the background; he was _that_ nervous and excited to be doing some more rule-breaking. (Yesterday, he nicked a _kebab_ from the staff room.) He went round a corner and slid past a surveillance camera that he knew was there because one of his classmates once sprayed it with red paint, and the background noise in his head turned into the song off James Bond. Once he reached his destination, he’d probably hum the Star Wars theme to himself, for there wasn’t a moment when Gary _didn’t_ have a song stuck in his head.

Gary spotted the elderly caretaker just in time. He dodged behind a large art installation and waited for the old man to pass, heart in throat. The aged corridors were full of things like that, of student-made artworks that looked even more pretentious in the dark than they did during the day. He didn’t understand the point of them.

The caretaker passed Gary’s hiding place and Gary ran off in the opposite direction. 

Films really made sneaking out of bedrooms look much easier than it actually was, Gary thought. Films didn’t deal with locked doors. Or paintings that looked bloody terrifying in the dark. Or losing your pencils in the middle of a corridor and not bothering to get them back cos there’s a security guard just up ahead.

Leaving your room at night was strictly forbidden, hence the security.

Gary wasn’t sure _why_ it was, though, and it seemed like a pretty silly rule now that he was thinking about it, for he was confident he’d once read something about people being more creative at night. Something about the night let people drop their inner inhibition; it would probably explain why Gary had come up with the absurd idea to sneak out after Jason’s snores had woken him up in the middle of the night.

Perhaps the rule was a sex thing. Students not being allowed to ‘canoodle’, that sort of thing.

Jason, his ridiculously intelligent roommate from Wythenshawe, had done a bit of disallowed sneaking out since he and Gary first met. Jay once got caught snogging his boyfriend in the dance studio on the second floor and came back a changed man, or so rumour had it. They nearly expelled him over it as well, but he was at the top of every single class at the time and a bit of a local celebrity so he got off with a written warning.

He was in his final year now, and more popular than ever:  he’d only appeared on _The Hitman and Her_ aboutfour times and he already had loads of boys and girls knocking on their door every day! (Gary once asked the headmaster whether he could be moved to another room, but Sir still hadn’t quite forgiven Gary for ‘butchering’ an Elton John song in fresher’s week so he and Jay were destined to stay roommates until one of them left, graduated, or got expelled.)

Still, Gary didn’t have much time to do his Drawing homework during the day what with his being so busy with everything else, so he had no choice but to do it at night. There was a classroom on the top floor that Gary knew was hardly ever used because of some urban legend meant to scare first-years, and it was perfect for secret night-time homework doing.

The school was one of those places that looks small on the outside but is actually a maze on the inside. The teachers who’ve worked there for years claim that there is a certain logic to it, but occasionally a teacher would still disappear and come back a month later claiming to have gotten lost in the underground storerooms.

A former bank or warehouse or something or rather, the school wasn’t even a school until about ten or fifteen years ago. Then the local parents complained that there weren’t enough places to send their children to, and a new institute was born. The building was refurbished to suit students’ and teachers’ needs, and within a year and a half the bland offices made way for classrooms and ateliers, easels, auditoriums, darkrooms and – eventually – Windows 95 computers. In his first week Gary got lost twice, and once he accidentally locked himself in a classroom and had to climb out of the window in the middle of September.

The school was in fact so confusing that Gary still hadn’t been to the recording studio even though he knew the school definitely had one. (It said so on the flyer.)

Gary climbed yet another staircase and arrived at the very top of the building. He tried the only door there. It wouldn’t budge. He tried the handle again, pressed his shoulder against the door hard and stumbled into the classroom. The lights were already on, which he didn’t think was very odd at all; a professor must’ve left and forgotten to turn them off.

The adrenaline created on by his little night-time adventure conveniently made him forget about the tension he was feeling in his entire body.  It’d been there ever since bloody Vic decided to give him the homework assignment from Hell, and it wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he tried to forget.

He couldn’t forget. It was always there, somewhere in the back of his mind; a reminder that he had dug a very deep hole for himself indeed. It was that feeling you get when you have such an enormous amount of work to do that you end up too paralyzed to do anything at all — and then you start feeling yet more anxious because you’ve been procrastinating all day. It was a constant, terrible cycle of nastiness.

He’d drop out if he could.

But we digress. The classroom Gary was in wasn’t a classroom as such; it was more like an extremely large room with easels and wooden desks everywhere he looked. Its white walls were covered in artworks, good and bad. The floor was covered in dirt. A strong smell of paint filled Gary’s nostrils. It reminded him of his Drawing professor lecturing him every time he handed in a crap drawing of an apple or a stapler or whatever, and he held his breath until he no longer noticed it.

Gary had long ago decided that the song that best suited this place was one by Oasis.

(He hated Oasis.)

Inwardly cursing himself for sinking so low that he had opted to do his homework at night, Gary claimed an easel, attached a large sheet of paper to it and carelessly deposited his brushes and pens on a nearby desk. He’d lost quite a few along the way, but he didn’t give a shit. Once he’d passed this godawful class and enrolled into his Music major he would no longer have to worry about buying expensive art supplies at the tiny shop just across the street. They wouldn’t even give him a discount!

Gary almost dropped his pencil when someone cleared his throat behind him.

‘What do you think you’re doin’, Mr. Barlow?’

If not for that delicious Mancunian accent, he’d think the ghost from the urban legend had crept up on him.

He’d recognize that voice anywhere.

Gary always said he wasn’t at college to make friends. He had a few mates back at home and he was more than content with that. Making friends and being a socially functional human being, he thought, would only distract him from the prize he’d set his eyes on. The only reason he was here, was to get through his orientation year and study everything related to music the next.

Then Mark Owen happened.

Gary very much wanted to be friends with _him_.

The story that Gary told his classmates on his first day of term was the one we’re all familiar with, even in a different universe: Gary learned to love music from a very young age (thank you, Depeche Mode), bought his first keyboard at the age of ten (thank you, mum and dad), and toured and toured and toured when he was in his mid-teens. He earned about a tenner per performance and gained a shitload of experience every night.

But time passed quicker than he thought, and one day Gary graduated from secondary school with below average grades and no real plans for the future — and more importantly, no record deal.

That was always the Big Dream, getting a record label before he turned eighteen. Making it big like the grandiose artists in his magazines. But he hadn’t, and he probably wouldn’t: there’s only so many people you can reach out to when you’re young.

It soon turned out the local Fine Arts College was Gary’s best bet. He wasn’t very creative in the way someone who painted or drew for a living might be – and he hated the idea of art schools in general, with all its pretentious, hat-wearing figures –, but he could drop all the core non-music modules in his second year if he worked hard enough.

Working hard was never an issue.

Art _was_.

The first fellow student Gary met was Mark. It was outside the Student Registry office on his first day at campus, and Gary remembered feeling instantly drawn to him. He was just effortlessly cool, Mark was: half-long, curly hair; a stuffed Adidas rucksack on his back; clothes that Gary would never pick out himself but looked amazing on Mark (the fluffiest, most-oversized jumper Gary had ever seen).

And _God_ , he was attractive. So attractive.

Rather embarrassingly, Gary had one of those goofy ‘Are you sure you’re talking to _me_?’ moments when Mark approached him that day — he was _that_ surprised someone as handsome as Mark was talking to him:

‘Excuse me? Hello.’ – Followed by _that_ smile. Goddamn – ‘Um, d’you know where the lift is?’

Gary shook his head infinitesimally as though momentarily lost in thought, and shrugged. ‘Dunno, mate, I – I only just got here meself. ‘M waiting for the keys to me room,’ he explained, nodding his head at the empty counter at the Student Registry office. Someone had just gone to get him his keys and a pile of official documents and flyers that Gary would probably glance at once and then haphazardly toss onto his bed. Gary was one of those people who bought electric appliances and never read the manual until ultimately shit hit the fan.

Mark followed his glance and frowned. Mark didn’t look like the sort of guy who did a lot of frowning. ‘I’ve been ‘ere for two hours and all _I’ve_ done is walk around in circles, this place is so big,’ Mark said, more to himself than to Gary. ‘So you’re a first-years too, then?’

Gary gestured at his suitcase on the floor. (His parents were going to drop off his keyboard later that week.) ‘Can’t you tell?’ I’m Gary, by the way. Gary Barlow.’ They shook hands, and Gary could’ve sworn he felt a spark. Not the type of electric shock you get when you touch your car door in the summer, but a _spark_.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr. Barlow. I’m Mark. What d’you wanna major in?’

‘Music.’

Mark’s eyes lit up at that. ‘Me too! D’you wanna, like, do Performance or Writing and Production?’

‘Er . . .’

Unfortunately, Gary didn’t have the chance to say that he hadn’t thought about it:

‘ _Ooh_ , I reckon that’s me roommate right there,’ a suddenly very distracted Mark said, waving at a tall bloke with unruly hair who’d just entered the corridor. ‘See you next time, Mr.’

And off Mark went. He and Tall Bloke shook hands, and they disappeared behind a plant pot.

Mark and Gary didn’t speak much in the following weeks, and Gary was okay with that. Mark was the perfect blend between the stereotypical ‘popular school kid’ and the artsy guy who looked like he burned incense in his room. Gary could never be on that level, not even if he tried. On his second day of fresher’s week Mark already had loads of mates, and Gary had none. On his third day, Mark got a special recommendation from their Performance teacher for playing the bass guitar as well as he did. Gary got so excited about playing on a grand piano that he almost broke it. See where we’re going with this?

Still, Gary could at least stare at Mark from a distance during lessons, so it was with great enjoyment that Gary got through his first few weeks of term.

Then their kind Drawing professor fell ill, and things got difficult.

Gary turned around to see Mark standing next to an easel about twenty feet away.

He was still in his pyjamas.

‘W-what am _I_ doing here?’ Gary said, all flustered and red-faced at seeing Mark like this, ‘I could ask you the same thing. You’re not even dressed properly!’

Mark didn’t really strike Gary as the type of guy who wore striped pyjamas. He was probably so confident and well-endowed that he could sleep naked and get away with it. (Not that Gary ever thought about those things.)

‘Tough. I came ‘ere first,’ Mark said. ‘Why’re you here?’

Gary crossed his arms and sat on one of the wooden desks behind him. It squeaked loudly underneath the weight of Gary’s bum, so Gary got back up and leaned against one of the easels instead. He stared at his own arms folded over his chest and it occurred to him then that he _did_ have his shirt on the wrong way round. ‘It’s embarrassing,’ he said, referring, of course, to his reason for being there.

‘Is your roommate having sex? Cos that happened to me last week. I hid in the canteen and ended up writing an entire song.’

Gary flushed an even deeper shade of red. ‘What? No. _Ugh_.’

‘Then what?’

Gary’s eyes met Mark’s. His classmate seemed genuinely interested in what Gary had to say, and for a time Gary considered telling him everything: about Professor Vic telling him off for not handing in his sketches, and lying to his mum about his grades so that she wouldn’t worry about him like she usually does. She’d been so proud of him when he enrolled, and it’d break her heart to see him go.

‘Can’t be worse than why _I’m here_ ,’ Mark said gently, and there it was again, that stupid smile that drove Gary up the fucking wall. (Mark’s smile was incomparably beautiful. He’d write a song about it if his heart ever stopped beating so fast just looking at it.)

‘And what’s that then?’ Gary asked as casually as he could. It occurred to him then that he’d been away from his dorm room for God knows how long and that he still hadn’t drawn a single thing, but he pushed the thought away instantly. He enjoyed being here with Mark more than he would working on his portfolio.

Mark bit his lip. ‘Didn’t do me homework for Painting,’ he said finally. His admittance came out as a whisper. Superfluously, for they were the only ones there.

‘But we were given that assignment three weeks ago!’

(It was an assignment on complementary colours. Professor Oliver had rather angrily said that she would not allow students entrance for two weeks if they showed up not having done the homework, and this was coming from a teacher who usually looked like she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Over the past few weeks, the local art shop experienced quite an influx of first-year customers scrambling to buy the latest books on colour theory.)

Gary couldn’t believe his ears. Mark always came across as such a diligent student even if he _did_ spend most of his lessons talking everyone’s ears off. ‘Even _I’ve_ done it, and I can hardly tell one shade of red from the other.’

Embarrassed, Mark covered his face with both hands. ‘I know, I know! It’s _awful_!’

It was only now that Gary noticed that Mark’s arms – sleeves rolled up to his elbows – were covered in red and blue paint. It looked kind of sexy, especially since it was the only piece of flesh on show: Mark’s pyjamas were oversized and unflattering. ‘I just couldn’t be arsed until about three hours ago,’ Mark admitted.

Gary laughed, then awkwardly touched the back of his head when he realised the remark must not have been meant as a joke. ‘Tis not as bad as having Professor Vic show up at your dorm room, though,’ Gary mumbled.

Mark looked almost impressed. ‘Yeah, that _is_ bad. What happened?’

Their kind, lenient Drawing professor was replaced by a skinny, dark-haired guy in his fifties in November. He always wore black and wouldn’t look out of place as a villain in a James Bond film, eerily petting a white cat in his underground lair furnished with modernist paintings of the people he despised. No one could pronounce his last name, so everyone just called him Professor Vic — short for his first name, Victor. It didn’t help that he sounded like he came from money.

Previously, Gary could get away with handing in half-arsed sketches in his throwaway notebooks that looked like a child had made them. Sometimes he’d even ask someone else to do it for him. But with Professor Vic as the newly appointed head of the core Drawing module, Gary couldn’t hide behind his classmates anymore.

Professor Vic was proper strict as well: he wanted everyone to hand in at least one hundred sketches per week and didn’t hold back if he thought something looked dreadful. It was no secret that Gary was his least favourite student.

Gary had no talent for drawing whatsoever, or so he had been made to believe. No matter how many drawings Gary made, Professor Vic would never find one that he liked. Even the one he spent three hours ago was thrown into the bin like a paper towel.

Stubbornly, Gary stopped handing in his sketches altogether.

He had his professor knocking on his door the next day.

The deal? If Gary didn’t show up with at least three hundred sketches every. single. week until Professor Vic saw something that lived up to his high expectations, he was going to be given an official warning.

‘What happens when you get an official warning?’ Mark asked Gary after a deep exhale of breath told him that Gary had finally stopped talking. Gary had originally planned to keep quiet  about what had happened because it was oh so embarrassing, but he ended up telling Mark everything.

‘Me roommate got one once for, erm, sneaking out at night,’ Gary explained, keen to leave out the fact that Jason had once been caught canoodling. ‘I reckon if you get two it’s game over, really.’

They were sitting next to each other now, about an arm’s length away. Mark smelled of paint and mint deodorant.

‘So you thought you’d go out in the middle of the night and risk gettin’ just that, an official warning?’ 

Gary pressed his lips together. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘Clearly.’

‘ _You’re_ here, though.’

 ‘Yeah, but I won’t get caught, will I?’ Mark said as though he was up to something.

(Did Mark ever sneak out for reasons other than art-making?)

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drawn, anyway,’ Mark pointed out when Gary didn’t respond to his previous remark. He glanced at the easel Gary had set up a quarter of an hour ago, and Gary found himself crossing his arms over his chest defensively. ‘You’re always hidin’ behind your easel. It wouldn’t hurt if you showed me your work, you know. Or _anyone_ , for that matter.’

(Was Mark the type of guy who visited a different boyfriend every night? Could he, if he wanted to?)

‘I’m not gonna do me homework while you’re here,’ Gary said stubbornly, ‘I only came here so I could have some peace and quiet.’

(Perhaps he wasn’t even gay.)

‘You do realise one of the reasons people make art is so others can see it?’

‘That doesn’t mean I want you to breathe down me neck when I work on me assignment.’

(Then again, that _hair_ . . .)

‘Well, you’re gonna have to, cos I’m not going anywhere,’ Mark said in an annoyed fashion. ‘Gotta paint, remember?’ he added, waving a hand at his technicolour arms. He got up from his stool  and disappeared behind his easel with a smug look on his face. ‘Gimme a shout when you’ve finished something, Mr. Barlow.’

 ‘I won’t,’ Gary grumbled.

It was as if Mark was posing a challenge.

But why? He had nothing to gain from this; would he not prefer to work on his assignment on complementary colours on his own?

Mark: ‘Fine, then I won’t tell ya about the song I wrote about you this morning.’

That caught Gary’s interest. ‘You did what?’

But Mark stayed annoyingly quiet as he worked on his painting, leaving Gary no choice but to pick up his ill-treated ink pens and draw, well, anything, really: the way the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling cast easel-shaped shadows on the floor; Mark’s rucksack, interestingly shaped; a desk, easy and symmetrical; his own hands, too large for this purpose.

Except Gary wasn’t an artist, so he saw none of these things the way someone holding a pen in an abandoned art classroom should. He did hear the ticking of a clock, however, and, of course, Mark’s yelp when his paintbrush slipped out of his wet fingers. The soft _thud_ that followed. His own pen, scraping the grainy paper. His heartbeat.

Already, Gary wasn’t focussing on what he saw, but on a subtle melody in his head that made him tap his fingers on his easel.

Gary always did notice sound more than he did things in his sight; he wouldn’t be able to tell you what gave the water in the river Mersey its hue, but he’d be able to recreate its sound perfectly — running, splashing, splattering water like the overwhelming overflowing of his heart, right there.

It’s why his songs were so good: he knew perfectly what made certain keys match magically together.

But how would he ever be able to write a _great_ one if he never paid attention to the things all around him?

‘Don’t hunch over when you draw.’

‘Hm?’

Mark’s head appeared from behind his easel. ‘You’re all hunched over. Stand straighter, it’ll help.’

Gary straightened his back and shoved his left hand inside his pocket. He’d never felt this aware of his posture before. Unsure whether to continue drawing or wait for Mark to tell him that he was holding his pen incorrectly, his dominant hand was frozen in mid-air. He felt like a very large sack of potatoes.

‘No, not like that,’ Mark sighed, and he put his palette on a desk and went over to where Gary was stood. He kicked one of Gary’s ankles without warning.

‘ _Ow_!’

‘Feet apart, c’mon. Get that hand out of your pocket.’

‘W-why?’

‘You need to be earthed when you make art. Feel the ground under your feet,’ Mark explained without irony. (Was this guy being serious? He knew the people here could talk rubbish sometimes, but _Christ_ — this was something else, wasn’t it? _Earthed_? What the fuck? All Gary was trying to do was draw, not summon a woodland spirit.) 

Gary glanced at Mark’s naked feet. ‘Are we in a Bob Ross rerun now? Wait, w-what are you doing?

He could hardly believe it. Mark’s hands were _on_ him now: one hand on his belly and the other on the small of his back as if this was a normal thing to be doing in a deserted classroom. Mark’s hands felt warm and small and not at all like what Gary had imagined.

They felt perfect.

‘Breathe, Mr. Barlow.’

‘I – I can’t when you’re – when –’

Gary had no idea where he was supposed to be looking. At Mark’s palms flat on his stomach, or at Mark’s eyes, so, so —

‘Breathe,’ Mark reiterated, and there was something about the way he parted his lips and exhaled through his mouth that made Gary feel as calm as Mark looked. He felt the anxiety he wasn’t even aware of having ebb away gently as his belly puffed in and out slowly against Mark’s hand. His mind felt clear. One of Mark’s fingers brushed his clad belly button ever so slightly, and it tickled.

It made Gary want more.

‘In through your nose, that’s it. Keep your back straight.’

‘Does this stuff actually help or did you just need someone to wipe your hands on?’ Gary said, voice thick with nerves, when he noticed that his shirt was covered in Mark’s paint. One thing Gary learned early on at art school was that expensive clothes were better off left at home.

‘There’s that,’ Mark said, smiling. He dropped his hands to his sides, leaving Gary’s tummy uncomfortably cold, and scratched the back of his head. ‘And . . . the fact that you no longer look so constipated.’

‘I wasn’t – I didn’t . . . !’

‘Shoulda seen your face when you walked in ‘ere. Art’s about the mind as much as what you do with your hands, you know,’ Mark elaborated, tapping his temple with his finger for emphasis. ‘You’ve gotta make yourself believe you’re actually here to get things done. You can’t do that all hunched over your easel like you’d rather be in bed. You don’t sit at the piano like a sack of potatoes, do ya?’ he asked, accusatorily.

Gary straightened a little as the words left Mark’s mouth. ‘And the, er, breathing thing?’

(Mark remembered that Gary played the piano. _Brilliant_.)

‘Loosens tension. You don’t want the tension to be here,’ – Mark pointed at his own chest – ‘cos it blocks creativity. Said so in a book I once read. I can lend it to you if you like.’

‘Right-o,’ Gary said with the air of someone who’d just been told that elephants were blue. He still wasn’t sure whether Mark was barking mad or whether he was actually onto something here. So many of his fellow students here were genuinely a bit weird that he could never tell if someone was being serious or not.

Still, Mark _had touched him_. Touched. Him. Mind you, it wasn’t any different from when he was paired up with Nicola from Swinton and they had to do the tango for their Dancing module and her hands accidentally touched his bum ( _ugh_ ), but this right here, with Mark, actually made him feel . . . giddy. Excited instead of rubbish.

He hadn’t felt excited or, in fact, _happy_ since he got here.

It wasn’t a surprise, then, that the rest of the night proceeded brilliantly. Gary drew the object he had in his sights with a greater flourish than before. His strokes were larger yet more refined. He even tried his hand at adding shadow and lighting.

Gary actually thought his sketch looked quite all right, really, and the melody that had been playing over and over in his mind became less subtle. Happy, is what it became. He added some key changes. A lyric or two was formed. In time, this classroom would no longer remind him of Professor Vic but of his own song, beautiful and Mark-shaped and technicolour.

It occurred to him that he still felt Mark’s hand on his back, and he ran out of ink. He put the cap back on his pen, tossed it into an overflowing bin, and inspected his own artwork from a distance. It looked finished.

‘Are you done yet?’ Mark asked him.

‘Think so, yeah. I’m quite chuffed with it, actually.’

‘Gimme a sec.’ Mark put down one more brush stroke and joined Gary again, palette still in his left hand. More streaks of paint had joined those that were already on his arms. It felt like minutes, hours, before he spoke. ‘How many drawings did ya have to hand in, again?’

Gary’s heart sank. ‘Three hundred. Before the end of the week.’

‘Where’s the rest?’

‘This is it, mate.’

Mark scrunched up his nose, paused, and said, ‘You’re fucked. Goodbye, Sir.’ And he turned around dramatically.

‘What, no!’ Gary desperately grabbed Mark’s free hand, and immediately let go when he realised what he was doing. ‘I – I need your help,’ he said, arms motionlessly to his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them. ‘I think. Can you help?’

Mark turned around, all ears. ‘What makes you think I can help?’

‘I dunno. You seem like you know what you’re talking about.’

Mark thought about it. ‘Will you do me Music History homework for me?’

‘Um, okay. Yeah. I suppose.’

‘All the exercises?’

‘Okay?’

‘For the rest of term,’ Mark pointed out.

‘Blimey, that’s pushing it a bit.’

Mark shrugged. ‘Your choice.’ He was about to return to his easel when Gary blurted out, quite desperately still:

‘Okay, fine. I’ll do your homework for you. All of it. Now _please_ can you tell me what you think of my drawing?’

Mark looked at it. He looked unimpressed. ‘It’s a nice handbag.’

Gary flushed. ‘It’s . . . your rucksack.’

‘I see. Same time tomorrow, then?’

|||

Gary knocked on the door, just twice in quick succession. Knocking more than twice would be overdoing it. He wasn’t _that_ desperate to see Mark after last night. Well, he was, but — you know, baby steps and all that. Not that he thought he and Mark suddenly had a ‘thing’ after their secret rendezvous, God no. He was just bringing Mark the parts of his Music History homework that he’d done and copied especially for him. (On special stationery as well.)

He looked at the clock at the far end of the hallway, then at the door. (And at the clock again because he hadn’t been paying any attention.) 9:13. Their Music History lesson was starting in less than twenty minutes. Usually Gary would be at the classroom already.

Was he sure this was Mark’s room? Had he remembered it correctly? It could be a total stranger’s for all he knew.

After Gary showed Mark his sketch last night, his motivation left him entirely. He couldn’t see how he was going to top that awful drawing, so he excused himself and left Mark to it. The clock striking four, Gary retraced his steps back to the corridor where his pens fell out of his pockets, and got lost. Everything was so dark and looked so similar at night that he just didn’t know where to go next.

He tried a door to his left, but it nearly triggered the fire alarm. He then tried a staircase, only to find out that he was at the other side of the building. Then he remembered the urban legend that was told to gullible first-years during freshers week, and he got a bit scared.   

Gary managed to fall asleep in a toilet stall until the sun went up. By the time he woke up and left his hiding place, students and professors alike were already walking around the place with textbooks and cups of cheap coffee in their hands. He went to his dorm room to dump his portfolio case on his bed, get changed, and do Mark’s homework and went to Mark’s like they had agreed ten minutes later.

He tried to stand straighter and breathe out through his mouth like Mark told him to.

It wasn’t helping.

Maybe Mark was still asleep; he _did_ look like the sort of guy who overslept. (If he’d slept at all tonight.)

Gary was about to knock on his door for a third and fourth time when Mark opened it.

‘Hi. Don’t just stand there,’ a very chipper Mark said when Gary sort of stared at him, ‘Come on in, I’ll be done in a minute. I was going to make you a cup of tea but then I remembered me roommate used all our cups for an art project.’

Gary reluctantly entered the room and closed the door behind him. He’d never been in someone else’s dorm room before. It looked the exact same as his and Jason’s – bunk bed, minimalist cupboard, posters and dried paintings, clothes on the floor (not Mark’s, judging by the size), tiny bathroom to his right – and yet it was nothing alike at all. It looked and _felt_ more mature. There was an ash tray on a table. Someone’s bed was unmade. There was an adult magazine hidden underneath a pillow.

It was the perfect, stereotypical college dorm room.

Including the smell.

Gary tried to fight the urge to pinch his nose. ‘Does your roommate know you’re not allowed to smoke in here? Jesus. He could get an official warning for that.’

‘If you say so,’ Mark said, and when Gary looked at him again there was a fag between his fingers. He took a long drag and blew the smoke in the general direction of the open window. Mark’s view was much better than Gary’s: it overlooked the school grounds and, in the distance, the city centre beyond the school gates. .

‘D’you mind?’ Mark asked uncertainly when he saw the look on Gary’s face, ‘I can smoke later if it bothers you.’

‘Um,’ Gary stammered, ( _Did_ it bother him? He wasn’t sure. He’d never tried smoking before.) ‘Just didn’t realise you smoked, is all.’

‘You’re not disappointed in me, are you, Mr. Barlow?’ Mark asked with an edge before taking another, longer, drag.

Suitably, Mark was no longer in his pyjamas. This morning, he was wearing jeans and a black sleeveless shirt that left far too little to the imagination. There were still smudges of paint all over his arms.

It’s the most skin he had seen Mark flaunt thus far, and Gary didn’t blame him: he looked dead attractive dressed like that.

‘A-are you gonna go out dressed like that?’ Gary turned scarlet. The words were out before he realised it.

‘ _Oh_.’ Mark turned to a small mirror. He ran his hands through his hair with his free hand and gave himself a once-over. ‘Yes, why?’

Gary swallowed. ‘‘S just cold, is all.’

Mark made a face at himself in the mirror. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. I’ll put a sweater on in a sec.’ (Gary cursed himself at this. This was the opposite of what he meant!) ‘Anyway, did you bring the homework? I hope I didn’t keep you up all night, you know.’

Gary looked at the papers in his hand as though he only just realised holding them. ‘Um, yeah. I’ve, erm, I’ve got them right here. And no, you didn’t keep me up all night. The homework, that is,’ he added pointlessly.

‘Oh, good.’ Relieved, Mark took the papers from him. Their fingers brushed as he did so, and Gary had to press his lips together to stop himself from saying something awkward.

(They were so close now. Physically.)

‘Thanks, Barlow,’ – Gary groaned at that, at “Barlow”; Mark was the only student here who still called him by his last name – ‘This is so helpful, you’ve no idea . . . I wish I could do it meself but I’m shit at remembering all those names and things. I do hope you’ve got legible handwriting,’ Mark said as he flicked through the papers. One of them had a useful timetable with composers’ dates of birth on it, and Mark took a moment to look at it. Gary had spent quite a long time on it.

‘You didn’t answer me question, by the way,’ Mark said without looking at him.

‘Um?’

‘About being disappointed in me for smoking,’ Mark said. Strangely, he sounded like Gary’s answer mattered to him.

‘I – um. I’m not? I guess? I just worry about your voice, is all.’

Mark smiled at that. (Or was it a smirk?) ‘Good.’ (Definitely a smirk.)

Almost as if provoking Gary to either do or say something incredibly embarrassing, Mark took a long, exaggerated drag of his fag and slowly blew the smoke into Gary’s face.

It made Gary want to lean in and kiss him.

(Because Mark’s lips looked so hot doing it. Not because of the smoke. That was gross.)

(Still hot, though.)

 _Fuck_.

Mark stubbed his fag in an ash tray with that smug smirk of his, and the desire was gone. ‘To be honest with ya I only started doing it cos of me voice in the first place. I sounded like a little girl before I picked up the habit. So no, I wasn’t pressured into it by me mates if that’s what you’re thinkin’.’

Gary had never heard Mark sing before. For some reason they weren’t given singing lessons until second term. ‘And you didn’t think a vocal coach would help?’

Mark shrugged. ‘Least I look cool doin’ it.’

‘You won’t look cool dying.’

‘So you _do_ judge. I see.’ Mark tutted as he put on a sweater he’d found in _his_ side of the wardrobe. ‘Such a tease, Mr. Barlow.’

Mark had already opened the door before Gary could reply. ‘I’m gonna need you to sit next to me in Music History, by the way. You know, in case the professor asks me a question and I don’t understand what you’ve wrote.’

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t rather sit with your mates?’

‘ _Nah_. They won’t’ve done the homework anyway.’

‘Neither have you, technically.’

‘Shush.’

When the boys arrived at the lecture hall five or six minutes later, most of their fellow first-years were already there. Gary usually sat in the last row of seats so he could get away with scribbling lyrics in his notebook, but Mark insisted they sit somewhere in the middle, next to a scruffy-looking young lad who wasn’t in their class. Gary recognized him from somewhere.

‘Oh, this is Howard, by the way,’ Mark explained when he noticed Gary staring at the stranger to Mark’s right, ‘Say hi to Gary, Howard.’

‘Hiya,’ Mark’s roommate Howard said drowsily, and he continued doodling on his foldable desk after Gary had given him an awkward wave. The desk was already full of pretentious song lyrics and drawings of scantily clad ladies. Howard, Gary saw, was in the process of adding a drawing of some stylized music notes.

‘Howard’s me roommate. And he’s in his second year,’ Mark explained. He seemed very impressed with Howard being a second-year student, as if knowing him made Mark feel instantly cooler. ‘He’s ‘ere cos he didn’t pass this module the first time round. His pet tortoise had died,’ Mark said solemnly, as if that explained everything.

‘Hang on,’ – Gary lowered his voice to a whisper even though Howard had literally just fallen asleep on his desk – ‘is he the one who . . . drove you out of your room last week? Cos he was, you know.’ Gary didn’t want to say ‘having sex’. Just thinking about it made his cheeks turn slightly redder, so he made a gesture with his hands that vaguely represented the act of love-making.

Mark nodded. ‘They were at it the whole fucking night,’ he whispered. ‘On the top bunk bed as well. I was afraid the bed would collapse and I’d die so I left.’

‘Who was he with?’ Gary couldn’t tell why, but he felt like the answer mattered.

‘Dunno. Tall bloke. Skinny. Local. Why?’ Mark glanced at Howard’s sleeping form. ‘You don’t fancy him, do ya?’

Gary made a disgusted face. ‘What? No way, mate, he’s too tall. And I’ve only just met him anyway.’

‘You don’t like tall guys?’

‘I don’t like guys who are bigger than me. Taller,’ Gary corrected himself.

‘ _Hm_.’ Mark said nothing when their professor dimmed the lights and turned on her projector. The lecture hall being very large and rectangular, she had to wear a small microphone on her blouse so that her voice would carry. Behind her appeared the picture of a famous composer that Gary had seen in his textbook last night, and he put his pen on the corner of his desk and folded his arms. He didn’t have to make any notes today, for he knew the content of the lesson by heart already.

As their professor spoke in that dull voice of hers, Mark was scribbling notes like mad, bless him. Before the first ten minutes of the lesson were over, his hands were covered in blue ink as well as paint. His mate Howard was still sleeping, and Gary wondered if his lover was who he thought it was.

Gary tried to concentrate, he really did, and he genuinely loved this subject but sometimes his mind would stray to the memories of last night or his nose would catch the scent of Mark’s sweater (it smelled of sandalwood and cigarettes) and he’d miss out on an entire chapter’s worth of information. And another. He thought about what it felt like to have Mark’s hands on his body yesterday, and a third chapter passed him by. They were discussing Mozart now. Probably.

The lights came back on, and their professor moved on to the discussing of the homework. It was the pivotal point of the lesson when every student would sit a little straighter and anxiously look at their notebooks. Your final grade would be redacted by half a point if the professor found out you hadn’t done the exercises, so it was important that you did the homework or at least pretended you had. Half a point could mean the difference between making it to year two or being kicked out of school at the age of eighteen.  

Gary started when Mark’s knee bumped his. (They were very close together, these desks.)

‘Gary, question six. What’s it say?’ Mark whispered behind his hand. And then louder, ‘Sorry, Miss. I’m just discussing the question with me classmate here. We couldn’t agree on the answer yesterday, _could we_?’ he said, putting the emphasis on ‘could we?’ as though this was Gary’s cue to do something. When Gary didn’t get the hint, Mark added ‘ _Help!_ ’ in a very squeaky voice.

‘Um?’ Gary looked at the exercises he’d given Mark that morning. Mark was conveniently pointing at exercise six, but even Gary himself couldn’t read it. It looked like a number.

Unable to decipher his own handwriting, Gary flipped through his own notebook in search for the right answer. Unfortunately he was so flustered by the fact that Mark’s _leg was touching his_ that he dropped his notes, and they landed somewhere beneath his feet. The desks and seats being so close together, he couldn’t reach them at all.

(Did Mark’s body just naturally radiate heat like that? Jesus Christ.)

‘I’m waiting, Mr. Owen,’ their professor pushed him. ‘Or am I to believe that you didn’t do your homework? You know what the consequences are,’ she said dully.

Gary remembered the answer. He’d seen it twice now, so of course he knew it: _1756_.

But all eyes were on the both of them now and if he said the answer out loud there’d still be no proof that Mark had actually done his homework and Mark would lose points on his exam and they might never speak to each other again. But he couldn’t whisper it into Mark’s ear, either, because — reasons. (He’d probably die being so close to Mark.)

Then he spotted Howard in the corner of his eye, and got an idea. He wrote the answer on his desk as inconspicuously as he could (vandalism: also worth an official warning) and poked Mark with his pen.

Mark spotted it. ‘Oh, um, it’s, er, 1756, I believe, Miss.’

A smile flickered on the professor’s face. ‘Very good. Thank you, Mr. Owen.’ She turned her attention to the rest of the class. ‘Now, who can tell me the name of another composer born in that same century? Hands up, please. Yes, Ms. Atwell?’

Mark slumped into his seat in relief. He brushed Gary’s thigh with his knee as he did so. Again. ‘That was close. Write clearer next time, will ya?’ he said, laughing in spite of the traumatic experience.

‘Tis your own fault for not doing the homework in the first place,’ Gary pointed out. ‘Also —’ He swallowed. He wasn’t sure whether he should bring this up. ‘You’ve called me Gary twice now.’

Mark made an impressed face. ‘Have I?’ He sat straighter when the professor went on to lecture a female student for calling Mozart a crap composer. ‘Well, don’t get used to it. I like Mr. Barlow more.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Mark said, followed by that smirk Gary had seen in his dorm room.

‘‘Because’ isn’t a reason.’

‘If you say so, Mr. Barlow,’ Mark said, and he went on to make more notes. ‘We’re still meeting at classroom 3.17 tonight, by the way. At one. In case you’ve forgotten.’

‘I – I haven’t.’

The rest of the lesson proceeded normally. Mark’s roommate Howard slept through the entire lesson. Gary had so many answers correct that he wrote himself a celebratory song. Mark wasn’t asked any more questions. The lesson ended, and Mark and Gary went their separate ways.


	2. Mesmerize My Mind In Colours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mark and Gary end up being stuck in a closet, literally.

Gary arrived at classroom 3.17 bang on time, at a minute to one. Incredibly nervous about spending yet another night with Mark, he had hardly slept in the run-up to their meeting. He’d even gone to bed with his clothes on so he wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of dressing in the dark again.

Strangely, his roommate was nowhere to be seen when he got out of bed. Annoying, for Gary wanted to ask him whether he could borrow his cologne.

Not at all knowing what Mark expected of him tonight, Gary had stuffed his pockets with yet more art supplies than before. He lost more than half of them along the way, like an unplanned trail of breadcrumbs that he might follow on the way back. He’d forgotten his portfolio case.

Mark and Gary hadn’t spoken since their shared Music History lesson more than twelve hours ago. Gary would’ve liked to, but they were both so preoccupied with assignments throughout the rest of the morning and afternoon that they only shared a single glance in Performance, the module dedicated to the playing of instruments. (Today, the trumpet.) Like a true person in love, Gary spent the rest of the day deciphering the way Mark looked at him in that moment, only to realize at dinner that he’d left the tag on his t-shirt. Mark must’ve been trying to let Gary know by telepathy.

Gary again found himself opening the classroom door with a lot of effort, and in he went. He ignored the tightening of his heart when he saw Mark. He wondered why biology had decided that being in love had to feel so strange physically.

The classroom looked nothing like it had last night. Almost every easel had been shoved into a corner, leaving a solitary easel in the middle of a well-lit space. In front of it stood a large desk with a sports bag underneath it. Mark’s.

Gary scoffed. ‘You’re not asking me to draw more bags, are you, Mark?’

Mark shook his head. He was busy decorating the desk with different types of drawing materials. Gary added his own meagre collection to the pile.

‘I’ve brought some things for ya. For you to draw, obviously,’ Mark said, and he squatted down and conjured up a rubber ball from his bag. He gave it to Gary.

‘It’s a ball,’ Gary pointed out.

‘Yes, but look at the shine! And the texture!’ Mark said a tad too enthusiastically, and he opened his bag for Gary to see inside. It was full of random objects that Mark must’ve collected that day. ‘I’ve also got a teacup, and a slinky,’ – Gary’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline – ‘ _Oh_ , and – you’ll love this – a Walkman!’ He held it up demonstratively.

Gary wasn’t impressed. ‘Hm. I see you’re no longer wearing pyjamas?’

Mark got up from the floor and looked at himself. He was still wearing his sweater from that morning. ‘Least I’m not wearing me shirt the wrong way round,’ he said with an indifferent shrug.

Gary felt himself blush. ‘You noticed.’

‘Yeah. Sorry ‘bout that.’ Mark took the rubber ball from him and put it in the middle of the desk. There was a digital egg timer next to it.

Gary looked at it. ‘You want me to draw a timer as well now?’

Mark chuckled. ‘Only if you want to.’

‘I . . . don’t understand.’

‘Here’s the deal,’ Mark explained, his inner teacher-slash-drawing instructor coming to the surface. It suited him. ‘I’ve brought about twenty objects in total, and I’m givin’ you one minute to draw each one. Think you can do it?’

‘One minute!?’ Gary cried out.

‘You’re right, that _is_ a lot, innit? Thirty seconds then,’ Mark said, all smiles and faked innocence, ‘D’you wanna start with a B6 pencil? Or an ink brush? I like ink brushes.’

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking, mate.’

Mark handed him a pencil. ‘You’ve come up with melodies in less than thirty seconds, haven’t you?’

Gary set his jaw. Mark was challenging him, he knew that. It’s what his Drawing professor did every single time they met, except with Mark he didn’t feel any of that underlying fear and frustration — fear that he’d be kicked out of art school with no degree and still no record deal. It was the worst kind of motivation, and it paralyzed him every single time. How the fuck was he supposed to get good grades if he went to bed feeling like utter crap for not having made enough drawings? How could his professors expect creativity and innovation from him if all his creativity was being sucked up by the pressure to perform?

This wasn’t art school, it was hell.

But because of Mark, Gary wanted to make the best art he could. Be creative not only because he needed to be, but because he _wanted_ to. (But mostly because he just really wanted to impress Mark. That’s what people do when they fancy someone, isn’t it? Impress them. Be better. Gary wanted to do all that and more. So much more.)

‘Yeah, I have,’ Gary finally admitted. He took Mark’s silence to mean that his classmate wanted him to elaborate, so he went on, ‘I wrote a song in thirty seconds one. Not a great one, mind, but good enough at the time. I think I handed it in for me application, actually.’

‘Good.’ Mark nodded at the easel he’d set up. ‘Rubber ball. Thirty seconds.’

‘And then?’

‘Stapler.’

Gary rolled his eyes and reluctantly went over to his easel. Mark had placed a large sketchbook where an empty canvas should be. It looked brand new. Gary hoped Mark hadn’t purchased it for this occasion only. ‘You could at least have given me objects that are nice to look at,’ he complained when he turned over the cover of the sketchbook. The paper was grainy and thick; not the sort of paper Gary liked working on.

Mark turned the timer on. ‘I’ll let you draw me next time,’ he said, more to the room in general than to Gary. It was barely audible.

‘What’d you say?’

Mark made a face as if he had no idea what Gary was talking about. ‘Nothin’. Twenty-five seconds.’

Time passed so quickly that Gary had only drawn a half-circle when the timer went off and the rubber ball was replaced by a stapler. Then a slinky. (It ended up looking like a scribble.) And a plush elephant. (Gary’s drawing was more ‘mouse’ than ‘elephant’.) Later, a Nintendo Gameboy. (The drawing was out of proportion.)

Gary’s wrist was hurting by the time he tore his twentieth piece of paper off his sketchbook, and he’d gotten quite a few papercuts. None of his drawings were any good. Thirty seconds later, the timer sounded for the final time. He’d tossed his drawings on the floor like a true man with no feeling for art whatsoever, and Mark went and picked them up.

Gary rubbed his painful wrist while Mark inspected his work. (His wrist hadn’t hurt this much since the last time he had a good wank. Which was yesterday. In the restroom. During Mrs. Oliver’s Painting module.)

‘What’d you think?’ he asked Mark.

Mark made another one of those faces of his. ‘They’re all half-finished.’

‘Well, you did only give me thirty seconds.’

‘You’re not using those seconds very well, are you?’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘It’s true, though. You use _way_ too many lines,’ Mark said with an illustrative wave at a drawing of a disfigured stapler.

Gary had no idea what Mark was talking about. ‘Was I supposed to keep the paper empty, then?’

‘What? No. It’s just — you were asked to draw a stapler, not a . . . mastiff,’ Mark argued, and he shoved the pile of drawings into Gary’s arms as if rejecting them entirely. He sat on the desk, legs crossed, while Gary watched him all puzzled and confused. ‘I’ve got a question for ya, Mr. Barlow. Why is _Your Song_ a good song?’

‘Eh?’

‘The Elton John one.’

‘ _Oh_!’ Something Gary knew. Finally. ‘Cos it’s simplistic. Stripped-back. It just works, really.’

Gary rubbed his temples. The smell of paint and lead and charcoal was giving him a slight headache. ‘Why?’

‘Are _your_ songs simplistic?’

‘I guess so, yeah.’

‘But you think they’re good?’

Gary looked at the drawings in his hands. They were smudged and frumpled up. ‘I do, actually, yeah.’ His eyes met Mark’s, and something clicked. It was the first time since starting art college a month or so ago that things were starting to make sense. ‘But you said I had to look at things like texture. How can I —’

‘You still can, it’s just it shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.’ Mark put the rubber ball back on the desk. ‘Try again.’

Gary groaned. ‘I’m gonna dream of this tonight, aren’t I?’

The START button on the timer was pressed again. Gary was too busy rushing back to his easel to hear Mark say ‘I hope so’.

Gary spent the next hour drawing. And the one after that.

Only given brief breaks so that Mark could explain the next assignment – of which there were many –, his hand felt numb at the end of their session. He didn’t even get the chance to think about the song he came up with yesterday.

When the timer rang for the final time that night, Gary felt immensely relieved. There are only so many times you can sketch a stapler and actually enjoy it.

After the boys had pushed back the easels in the odd chance that a professor was using the classroom tomorrow, Mark had a quick glance at the thick pile of drawings on the desk in front of him. He counted about one hundred sketches in total. Along with some other sketches that Gary had made today and yesterday, he was 187 drawings away from that week’s target. He still had three days to go.

Gary was dying to find out what Mark thought. ‘And?’

‘This one’s good,’ Mark said, pointing at a quick sketch of a keychain. ‘This one also.’ He held it askew. ‘I like the way you did the shadows. Very nice.’

Gary felt his heart swell with every compliment. Mark liked his drawings! ‘And the rest?’ he asked, in his excitement half-expecting Mark to tell him that he was the best artist to ever have graced the Earth. His work must be good enough for Professor Vic now, surely?

Mark rubbed his ear. ‘Well, there’s still time.’ He avoided Gary’s eyes as he said so. His tone of voice signified enough, and Gary’s heart suddenly felt like lead. ‘When did you say the deadline was?’

Gary watched Mark roll up his drawings. He was doing so with extreme care. Strange, because Gary felt like tearing them apart until there wasn’t a single salvageable drawing left. ‘There isn’t one, really. I just have to keep handing in drawings till Vic’s confident that I’ll pass me portfolio presentation at the end of term.’ _Which I won’t_ , he thought.

Suddenly experiencing a bit of light-headedness, Gary leaned against the desk and closed his eyes until the feeling faded. Now that his mind and body were no longer occupied, he felt tiredness slowly seep into every single limb. He hadn’t had a proper night’s rest for what felt like ages. Perhaps spending his nights drawing wasn’t such a good idea after all.

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah. Just knackered, is all.’

Mark handed him his drawings. He had neatly tied them with some strong elastic. ‘You’ll get there, you know. Drawing’s only a one-term module, anyway. You won’t have to worry about it anymore after the holiday.’

‘Yeah, but if I don’t pass . . .’

‘You will. I promise.’ Mark zipped up his sports bag and slung it over his shoulder. How he had managed to get all the staplers, tea cups, rubber balls, art materials, dictionaries and an electric fan (!) back into his bag, Gary did not know. ‘D’you want me to walk you back to your dorm? We don’t want you to fall asleep in the middle of a corridor.’

Gary was too tired to argue. ‘I’d like that, yeah. I actually got lost last night, can you believe it?’

‘You got lost?’

‘It’s a big building.’

‘You’ve been ‘ere for more than a month.’

Mark cast another searching look at the classroom to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and turned off the lights. The door closed behind them with a creak and a soft _thud_ , and off he went.

‘Still big, though.’ Gary lingered in the corridor to get used to the sudden darkness after the bright lights of classroom 3.17, but Mark had already started towards the stairs. ‘And those bloody art installations on the first floor look fucking terrifying at night,’ he added when he had caught up with Mark at the foot of the staircase. ‘I was afraid one of them would kill me or something.’

‘Are you saying you’re afraid of the dark?’ Mark didn’t sound like he was judging.

‘No,’ Gary lied. Then five seconds later, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’

They headed into a long corridor that Gary wasn’t sure he’d been in before. In the dark, everything looked similar.

‘Have you heard of the school’s urban legend, then?’ Mark asked Gary a bit too gleefully after they’d turned left. Not recognising any of the classrooms they passed, Gary could’ve sworn they had to turn right.

‘I try not to think about it.’ A shiver ran down Gary’s back as though he’d just walked straight into a wall of ice, and he walked a little faster. Mark soon fell back into step with him.

‘I think they’re wrong, you know,’ Mark said speculatively. They passed the restroom Gary had spent the night in previously, and Gary sighed in relief. Finally something he recognized. ‘The students who say the poor girl got killed cos an easel fell on top of her, I mean. I reckon she got murdered and that the killer got away with it. It would explain the bloodied apparitions of her throughout the years. Apparently one teacher saw her at night and resigned the next day.’

Gary tried very hard not to look at the art installation up ahead. From a distance, it looked like a cloaked figure not unlike the ones he’d heard stories about in the hallways — stories that, he rationally knew, were complete bollocks but always managed to terrify him.

Some years ago, a couple of months after the school’s very first term, a girl died a suspicious death in classroom 3.17. It was hushed up by the police – something the headmaster had a hand in –, but rumours soon spread that the girl was murdered. As usual with these stories, things were blown way out of proportion until none of the facts remained. What was left, was a rumour not akin to a horror story. What had truly happened, only the alleged killer knew.

Gary had done a great job at ignoring the stories and pretending he didn’t believe them, but every time he went up to the third floor he couldn’t help but feel a strange feeling in his tummy. The only reason he didn’t feel so bloody terrified up there was because Mark was there with him . . .

‘It – it’s just a story to scare students, mate,’ Gary stammered. He didn’t sound as certain as he’d hoped. ‘Really, I th—’

There was a loud _clang_ as if someone had walked into a metal trash can.

Gary’s heart dropped into his stomach.

The black form of the art installation moved as if brought to life by magic. It headed straight for them, fast, and it moved just like a human did.

It was the ghost from the stories.

 ‘Stop right there, you!’

The shadowy ghost transformed into the body of the caretaker.

‘C’mon!’ Mark hissed, and they ran for it. Windows and paintings passed them by quickly, and Gary didn’t think they’d ever stop running until Mark pulled him into the tiniest cupboard ever created by man. The door closed, and it was as if Gary had closed his eyes. He heard his drawings drop onto the floor.  

It was terrifying, like being in the dark also meant being in an airless room with no place to go.

Then he remembered Mark was there with him, and the fear was accompanied by something far worse.

‘Where are you, you rascals? Don’t think you can outrun me.’ The caretaker sounded close-by and not at all out of breath. He must’ve taken a shortcut.

Gary was wide awake now, and not because the caretaker was looking for them.

He was wide awake because Mark was so close that he could feel his breath against his cheek. Mark’s chest against his. His hands, so nearby.

What Gary assumed was a broom was poking his back. There was a bucket at his feet.He tried to move, and his nose bumped Mark’s.

His eyes still weren’t used to the dark.

‘Ow.’

‘Sorry.’

Mark shushed him, and so Gary held his breath as he listened to the caretaker’s footsteps. They were getting nearer. And nearer.

Gary thought he could hear one of the old man’s bones crack. An intrusive thought that involved the caretaker getting a heart attack entered Gary’s mind, and he pressed his lips together to stop himself from saying it out loud. 

One sound, and it’d be game over. They might – no, _would_ get expelled over this. Jason hadn’t when _he_ got caught, but Jason was famous. Gary was just Gary. He wouldn’t have a foot to stand on. How suspicious must this look, getting caught in a bloody cupboard with another _boy_?

Gary was terrified that if he exhaled the old man would hear it and they’d both be spotted, or that his fast-beating heart would give it away but he was even more scared of leaning in and finding his lips suddenly on Mark’s — because _God_ , did he wish he would. He had never wanted to kiss someone that much in his life, and he’d probably, _definitely_ risk being expelled over it

They were so close that that little extra inch wouldn’t even make a difference.

He was afraid to move his hands, worried that they’d find something he wasn’t supposed to touch. There were so many parts of Mark he _could_ , if he wanted to.

The caretaker warned them that they’d both be expelled if he caught them, and Mark’s fingers laced into Gary’s like a silent reassurance. He felt that spark he’d experienced when they first shook hands, and he knew immediately that he was in too deep.

‘Remind me why you’re scared of the dark?’ Mark whispered. Gary felt every word against his skin.

(Seriously? He wanted to do this _now_?)

‘Can it wait?’ Gary heard a door open, and he started. He squeezed Mark’s hand tighter. If the caretaker was checking every single door here, they’d soon run out of luck.

‘It can’t,’ Mark whispered urgently.

Gary swallowed. The caretaker opened yet another door – still closer – and Gary closed his eyes as if bracing himself. ‘I – I’m scared of not knowing what’s in it. Terrified.’

‘Me too,’ Mark admitted, and he squeezed back.

The caretaker checked another room. Gary could hear him sigh in frustration as he slammed the door shut. A piece of floorboard creaked underneath the caretaker’s step, confirming that he was right in front of their hiding place.

Mark’s chest puffed out against his own, and Gary regretted not kissing Mark when he had the chance — he could still do it now, just briefly —

(Did kissing count if you did it in the dark?)

He was certain he could hear the old man reach for the door knob. It was too late now.

His life here was over.

A second man’s voice crunched into life just as Gary was about to let out a sob.

‘We have a situation in the control room. Assistance required, over.’

‘I’m busy. Find someone else,’ the caretaker groaned. ‘Over.’

The second, unfamiliar voice said: ‘Get your ass over here or I’ll make sure your retirement doesn’t go as smoothly as you’d like. Over.’

‘ _Ugh_ ,’ the caretaker said, and Gary heard him shuffle away slowly.

It wasn’t until Gary heard the unmistakable sound of the staff elevator that he dared breathe again.

The caretaker was gone. They were safe. They weren’t going to be expelled.

‘That was close,’ Mark said, relieved. Gary was certain he could hear that familiar smile in his voice again.

Gary wished he could see and frame that smile so he would be reminded of this moment for evermore; not of the caretaker nearly catching them, but of Mark being so close that it felt like the most intimate thing Gary had ever been a part of.

He didn’t like how naked and cold his hand felt when Mark let go of it.

Not wanting to spend another second in that dusty cupboard, they left their hiding place mere seconds after they’d heard the elevator _ting_. They were both covered in dust. The gloom of the deserted school corridor was nowhere near as terrifying as the dark they’d just been a part of.

After Gary had picked up his now-ruined drawings from the floor, he and Mark spend what felt like an eternity not quite looking at each other. They knew that something had happened in that cupboard that might have long-lasting repercussions, but they were both doing a very good job at pretending that spending ten minutes in a cupboard with an attractive male meant fuck-all.

(Especially if you felt like kissing said attractive male in said cupboard.)

It was up to Gary to lift the silence. His voice sounded strangely unfamiliar, and he cleared his throat in between words so he might sound less nervous. ‘So, er, - _ahem –_ dorm rooms, then?’ (His heart was still beating _so_ fast.)

‘Yes – yes,’ Mark said absently. He was looking around him as if he’d lost something.

‘What’s wrong?’

Mark scratched the back of his neck. ‘I think I’ve lost me bag.’

‘How can you lose a bag that’s almost twice the size of you?’ In his nervousness Gary laughed at his own remark, but Mark didn’t find it very funny.

‘My . . . name’s on it,’ Mark said slowly, as if he was only just remembering it. ‘If the caretaker comes back and finds it . . .’

The dread that Gary hoped he would not feel again settled in his stomach once more. They were not out of the woods just yet. ‘He could put two and two together,’ Gary concluded. ‘Crap.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What do we do?’

Mark raised his eyebrows at that. ‘I’m not havin’ you search for me bag,’ he insisted.

‘Why not? I can help, can’t I?’

‘You might get caught still. Sides, you look like you’re going to fall asleep in a minute.’

Gary repressed a yawn. ‘No I don’t.’

‘You do a lil’ bit.’

Gary crossed his arms resolutely. He was not leaving Mark out there alone. ‘There’s less chance of us getting caught if there’s two of us.’  

‘There’s . . . not?’

‘ _Tough_. I’m helping. And I’m very fond of that rubber ball,’ he added as an afterthought.

The corners of Mark’s mouth twitched. ‘All right then.’

The boys tried to retrace their steps as best as they could, but found no oversized bags in the deserted corridors. It was as if Mark’s bag had disappeared entirely. (Or worse, stolen by an overzealous caretaker . . .)

Mark was about to give up the search and head to their respective dorm rooms when Gary spotted something on the floor. He went and picked it up.

‘It’s one of my pens! We came from that direction, I think.’ He pointed at the corridor in front of them.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

Gary and Mark decided to follow a trail of yet more art supplies until Mark yelped and fished his bag out of a dark, dusty corner. The handle had come off.

The bag must have dangled off Mark’s shoulder and magically slid into a corner where no elderly caretaker could see it, Gary told himself. He did not want to think about the ghost of a former student giving them a hand . . .

‘Told you we’d find it,’ Gary said a bit nervously.

But Mark had already moved, and Gary nearly lost his drawing buddy in the dark until he found Mark standing in front of a door that was ajar. A strip of light from the crack painted a thin, yellow line on the dark floorboard.

‘It’s the recording studio!’ Mark said excitedly. The door conveniently had the words RECORDING STUDIO on it. ‘Shall we have a look, Mr. Barlow?’

Gary hesitated. He was tempted, yes (he’d never been in the school’s recording studio before and he didn’t even know it was _there_ until three seconds ago), but it felt to him like a trap. The caretaker could easily be waiting for the boys to walk in so he could catch them red-handed.

‘The lights are on,’ he pointed out reluctantly.

Mark shrugged. ‘Maybe someone forgot to turn them off.’

‘It could be a trick.’

‘You mean by the caretaker? _Nah_ , he’s not like that.’ Mark made a movement to open the door, but Gary stopped him.

‘What if someone’s, you know, _using the room_?’

Mark rolled his eyes. ‘You mean to have _sex_?’ – Gary made an affirmative gulp and turned slightly redder – ‘They wouldn’t. Not with the lights on, anyway.’

‘That’s not very romantic.’

‘Who said anything about romance?’ (Gary thought he could see Mark wink at him then, but it might have been a trick of the light.)

Despite Gary’s best efforts, Mark opened the door, revealing —

‘A white piano!’ Gary exclaimed, and he forgot about his worries entirely and nearly humped the poor thing.

The studio was proper big, and you’d have no idea it was in the middle of a poorly funded school just by looking at it. It had three adjacent rooms, one for the safekeeping of instruments such as Gary’s new favourite piano, a booth to record songs in and, of course, a large, rectangular space that was filled with a high-tech mixing desk and other equipment that Gary could only wish he owned himself.

‘You feel right at home here, don’t ya?’ Mark smiled, impressed with the studio too. He gingerly put his bag on the floor and joined Gary at the piano. Gary was already sitting on the traditional red stool in front of it, tempted to open up the lid and play. Mark nudged him with his elbow. ‘Play for me, c’mon.’

But Gary shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I —’ He didn’t know how that sentence was going to end. He would normally have killed to play on a piano such as this after having spent most of term working away behind his second-hand keyboard, but something didn’t feel right. What, he did not know.

Mark put his hand on his shoulder, and there was that strange near-electrical charge again. ‘Please?’ he said.

Gary looked up at Mark leaning on the piano. ‘Can I just ask you one thing, Mark?’

He didn’t know why he wanted to ask this question. He wasn’t even sure why it mattered, or if it ever had. It just felt weird not to acknowledge that something happened a couple of minutes ago that he couldn’t forget about. How could he ever forget that overwhelming pull of wanting to kiss someone in the dark? ‘Do you do it often? Sneak out with people at night, I mean?’ he asked.

A long silence. Then, gently, ‘I’ve told ya, I’ll help you with your drawing homework if you help me out with Music History. I thought that was the deal?’

That stung. Gary didn’t know why, but it did. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

Mark looked puzzled. ‘Then what?’

‘Is that all this is, then? A deal? Do you have four other students you do this with every night? When I go back to me room, do you have someone else waiting for you?’

Mark opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again and stared at his feet. When he looked at Gary again, he wasn’t looking at Gary’s eyes but at his lips.

Feeling himself burning up, Gary drummed his fingers on the lid of the piano to have something to keep him distracted. He had almost drummed his way through an entire song in his mind before Mark spoke again.

‘You really _have_ grown to like that rubber ball, haven’t ya, Mr. Barlow?’

When Gary looked at Mark again – and those sad, blue eyes, so unlike the ones Gary had fallen in love with – he knew that this perhaps wasn’t the right moment. Perhaps there was never going to be one. ‘Yeah. Guess I have.’

Gary opened up the lid of the piano slowly, like it was a delicate little thing that might crumble under his touch. His hands were shaking. ‘I came up with a song recently if you wanna hear it?’ He hated how disappointed he sounded. He wasn’t . . . used to being disappointed.

‘Yeah.’ Mark sniffed his nose. ‘I’d like that.’

Perhaps unfitting for the adventures they’d just been through, Gary started playing a slow song that he imagined would require little more than this piano here. Having come up with it only yesterday, the melody was far from perfect and his piano playing in fact a little off-key — but then the lyrics came in and all was forgiven: ‘Love, it has so many beautiful faces, sharing lives and sharing days . . .’ The song was Gary describing love from the outside looking in, and yet it touched a nerve in Mark that was usually only reserved for songs by his favourite artists. By the time the song was finished, it had gained a meaning that neither Mark nor Gary realised it had.

It made both of them feel very, very sad indeed.

Gary cleared his throat. ‘That’s the song I came up with when,’ – He didn’t want to say _When we did our first drawing session_ – ‘Yesterday. I came up with it yesterday.’ He closed the lid of the piano by way of making clear that he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘What’d you think?’

Mark looked impressed. ‘I can’t believe that you wrote that in such a short amount of time. The song I handed in for me application I spent more than a month on,’ he huffed. ‘It wasn’t even that good.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Gary said, suddenly remembering something Mark had said yesterday, ‘Didn’t you say you’d written a song about me?’

Mark touched the back of his neck as if embarrassed. ‘Yeah, um, I — lied about that. To get you motivated.’

‘ _Oh_.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, it’s okay,’ Gary lied, and he got off his stool as though having a sudden change of heart, and put his drawings underneath his arm. He heard the roll of paper dent as he did so.

He didn’t want to be here anymore. His heart had tightened as though something was pressing hard on his chest, and he felt an increasing need to return to his dorm room. Alone. He would have, only he didn’t know where he was. ‘Where’d you say the dorm rooms were?’

Mark and Gary left the recording studio without speaking to each other. Gary wasn’t talking because he was far too busy contemplating why so many silly things bothered him tonight (like whether Mark enjoyed spending time with him at all, and why he felt so hurt that Mark had lied to him); Mark wasn’t talking because he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Gary was suddenly so quiet.

They had fun tonight. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

Mark looked at Gary’s avoiding eyes. ‘You’re not mad at me, are you?’

‘Why should I be?’

Mark tried to think of a reason, but he came up blank. ‘I dunno, I just . . . Never mind,’ he said, and he waved the issue away with a flick of his hand.

Five quiet minutes later, the boys arrived at Gary’s dorm room. The light of the ceiling lamp was visible through the translucent little window in the door, and Gary reckoned Jason had probably just returned from wherever the hell he’d been.

‘Er, thanks. For tonight,’ Gary said. He didn’t know what else to say.

‘No problem.’

‘I guess I’ll be seeing you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Bye, Mark.’

The door closed. ‘Bye, Gary.’


	3. So Let The Night Bring Us Together Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mark comes up with a novel way to improve Gary's art.

The next day didn’t go off to a great start. They had Drawing first thing in the morning, and naturally Gary, who was still tired from almost getting caught by the caretaker last night, was absolutely bricking it. He still had a couple of days left to finish the remainder of his drawing quota, but Vic was probably going to want to see how he was getting on today. Unfortunately the 30-second drawings he made with Mark yesterday were damaged from their late-night chase and he didn’t want to hand them in in case Vic got angry at Gary for ‘mistreating the material’ or something, so he had nothing to show him.

Worse still, he still had no idea whether Mark even enjoyed being with him yesterday. Maybe Mark _was_ only using Gary for his homework. Gary wouldn’t blame him if he did.

Before Gary was about to head to a no doubt awful Drawing lesson, a very curious Jason looked at Gary as if he was weighing him up in his mind.

They didn’t talk often, him and Jason. They could more or less abide each other’s separate morning routines and they sometimes even spent dinner together if they had to, but they never talked about private stuff like boyfriends or what their favourite colour was. Gary knew that Jason was a professional dancer and that he had a boyfriend whom he sometimes snuck out for at night, but that’s where his knowledge of Jason ended, really. Like Mark, Jason just seemed effortlessly cool. An enigma, almost. How could Gary ever compete with _that_?

‘Can I just say something personal, Gaz? If you don’t mind?’ Jason said, ever the considerate roommate.

Gary buttoned up his shirt. He was wearing a simple blue shirt today, mainly so he wouldn’t feel like he was dressing up for . . . certain individuals. ‘Er? I guess?’ he said, unsure where this was going.

‘He looks nice, your boyfriend.’

‘My what?’

‘The lad who walked you to our room last night? You’re not together?’

‘Er, no? What makes you think we are?’

Jason smiled. (He had a very good smile, Jay did. Not as good as Mark’s, but still.) ‘Let me put it this way, Gaz, there are only a few reasons why someone would risk being expelled at this school. And none of them have to do with making _art_ , if you understand what I’m sayin’.’ (Gary didn’t.) ‘Besides,’ Jason went on, ‘Why else would you smell of someone else?

Gary coloured. ‘I don’t . . . !’

But Jason had already half headed out the door. ‘See ya later, Gaz. Give your boyfriend my regards.’

‘HE’S NOT MY BOY—friend,’ Gary shouted, only to realise at the last moment that Jason was already long out of earshot.   

Mark wasn’t his boyfriend.

But one thing he did know: Jason was shagging Mark’s roommate.

When Gary arrived at the Drawing classroom a couple of minutes later, he was seriously considering just twisting around and heading back to bed. It was a smaller classroom than the one Gary and Mark had spent the night in, with six large desks that each easily fitted three students set up in a u-form. Normally, Gary would hide behind his easel and hope no-one would notice him. Now, everyone would be able to see how shit he was.

Professor Vic gave him a stern look, and Gary found himself sitting next to Nicola from Swinton because every other stool was already taken. Mark was sitting at the other end of the u-form. He was scribbling away in a lined notebook until Vic ordered him to put it away.

Gary felt silly for believing that he and Mark had a connection just because they had done schoolwork together. If that were true, he’d be best mates with Nicola after dancing the tango together . . .  

Vic, who also acted as today’s ‘model’, told everyone to open their drawing pads on a blank page. He would change poses every thirty seconds, and said that there were no excuses for leaving sketches unfinished. Gary glanced at Mark at that, but his crush was busy writing in his notebook again. When Vic faced him, Mark quickly covered his notebook with his drawing pad and flashed the professor an innocent smile that Gary knew was fake.

Vic took on a preposterous pose, and off they went. Thirty seconds later, he sat on a student’s desk. Then he pretended to be sweeping the floor with a broom. Another half a minute later, he lay down on the floor. It was extremely difficult to keep up with, but thanks to last night’s practice Gary _actually_ managed to finish most of his sketches. (!) He’d even made a few that he thought didn’t look too bad.

At the end of a gruelling drawing session, Mark had gone back to writing in his notebook. Gary was tempted to head over and ask Mark what he was doing, but before he could make up his mind Vic had quietly approached him and asked Gary whether he could step outside for a minute. He reluctantly followed him.

‘How are you getting on with your assignment?’ Vic asked. He didn’t sound remotely interested, and he was standing on the threshold of the door to make himself look slightly taller and intimidating.

‘I-I’m working on it.’

Vic crossed his arms. ‘And yet you’ve decided not to show me anything.’

‘The drawings I made yesterday were damaged, I didn’t want to . . .’

Gary trailed off because Vic was already talking over him. ‘Mr. Barlow, I don’t need to remind you that you have to present your best drawings at the end of term? Your _absolute_ best? If we deem your chosen work too amateurish we may not allow you to stay here. You must be aware of that by now, surely?’

‘But Sir, I want to major in Music, not—’

Vic raised a warning finger. His face looked as though he had just swallowed a wasp. ‘I do not care if you wish to major in Music, Mr. Barlow,’ he said, ‘for it is not relevant. You cannot possibly think you can graduate in two or three years’ time if you do not possess a creative eye. Drawing, like your Sculpture and Performance modules, is a mere test to see if you have what it takes. As for this moment you do not, and unless you do something about it there is a substantial chance that you will be packing your bags at the end of this term. Are we _clear_?’

He always managed to make him feel like a massive failure, Vic did. It was that man’s bloody _superpower_. If Vic had been the person he spoke to during his application interview, he probably wouldn’t even be here.

Gary couldn’t even remember half of his application interview, it’d gone so fast. He showed up at campus at nine in the morning with a portfolio folder full of half-arsed drawings and photographs, and a cassette in his trouser pocket. He’d also brought some lyrics he’d worked on, just in case. He had to pay a tenner to be allowed an interview, and twenty minutes later he was sat in the Animation classroom, talking to Professor Oliver about his ambitions.

Professor Oliver, the head of the Painting module, seemed thoroughly unimpressed with Gary until he played her the cassette he’d brought. She must’ve seen heard something in those songs that made her change her mind, but in hindsight Gary wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed so odd now that someone like him was still here now, handing in crap artworks and not really paying attention to his professors when there were dozens of people who probably deserved and wanted it more. (They _were_ good songs, though.)

Gary stared at his hands. He felt like a child who was being reprimanded for bad behaviour. In a way, he was. ‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir,’ he stuttered. He had to blink away tears.

‘Good. You still have a couple of days left. Use them wisely.’ With that, Vic went back into the classroom and told everyone to clean up their desks. By the time Gary no longer felt like he was about to break down and cry, everyone had already left via a side exit.

Everyone but Mark.

‘Hi,’ Mark said. He was standing at Gary’s desk with his hands behind his back. ‘Talk with Professor Vic go well?’

‘Yeah, t’was brilliant, that was. He reckons I’ll be at the top of all me classes if I keep up the good work.’

‘Really?’

‘No,’ Gary sighed. He put his hands inside his pockets and pursed his lips. He added, apropos of nothing, ‘You know what really sucks?’ – Mark shrugged by way of saying that he didn’t – ‘I’ve got this mate, Rob his name is. There were these, I don’t know, band auditions a couple of months back, before I applied for this school, and Rob comes up to me and says, _I think you should audition_. _I reckon you could win it._

‘And I didn’t. But Rob did, and now there’s apparently only about ten applicants left, and this — _God,_ this could be his big break, this. He could make it. And _I’m_ stuck here drawing, and analysing paintings I don’t give a fucking shit about. I feel like I’m wasting my life, I do. There’s kids younger than me who are already on their second album,’ he said petulantly.

‘Life don’t work that way, you know,’ Mark said after Gary had finished. ‘Comparing yourself to others, I mean. People always find their paths in the end.’

‘What if mine’s a dead end?’

‘Then you turn back and try another.’

Gary scoffed. ‘You sound like me roommate.’

‘You should try listening to ‘im. Anyway, I’ve . . . got something that might cheer you up,’ Mark said when Gary started cleaning his desk. (He had made a right mess of it; streaks of permanent marker had bled into the woodwork.) ‘You know how I said I’d wrote a song about you but I hadn’t really?’

‘Yeah?’

Mark handed Gary a piece of torn-off piece of paper with a long text on it. He must’ve been hiding it behind his back this entire time.

Gary looked at it. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a song. For you. And an apology.’

Gary took the piece of paper from him, but didn’t read it. ‘What for?’

‘For making you think that I’m only spending time with you cos I want your homework. I’m not. I’m spending time with you cos, you know,’ – Gary found himself holding his breath – ‘I like spending time with you. You’re cool. I’m sorry for making you believe somethin’ else.’

Gary didn’t know what to say to that. (Mark had written him a song! A SONG!)

He stared at the lyrics in his hands. He felt like he was about to fall over, so he clutched the paper a little tighter and half-leant his bum against his desk. ‘D’you want me to read it now, or?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Out loud?’

Mark nodded.

Gary took a deep breath and started reading: ‘Oh, oh, oh, you don’t know your pens from your brushes, and every time you draw you get hot flushes,’ – Gary raised his eyebrows at that – ‘But I’m still drawn to you, if only you knew . . .’

The song went on like that for half a page. When Gary reached the final chorus, his voice sounded raw from reading everything out loud. His heart, as was usually the case when he was with Mark, was beating fast.

Gary made an impressed face. ‘Catchy,’ he said, and he meant it.

‘It makes more sense when it’s sung,’ Mark admitted in a small voice. He didn’t usually get this shy.

Mark looked a little flustered, so Gary promised that he ‘really, really liked the song’. When Mark looked relieved at that, Gary looked at the piece of paper fondly before folding it so that it fitted in his pocket. He gave Mark a smile that was quickly reciprocated. ‘Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it. No-one’s ever written me a song before.’

‘‘T wasn’t too simple, was it?’

‘No, no,’ Gary reassured Mark, which earned him another smile. (Two smiles in a row! He was enjoying today.) ‘It’s perfect as it is.’

Gary didn’t know what else to say, so he continued cleaning his desk until his supplies were all neatly packed away in a man purse Jason had lent him. (It was a whole lot better than stuffing his pockets with supplies and hoping that he wouldn’t lose them.) Mark helped him clean the permanent marker off his desk with some paper towels from the adjourning restroom, and in no time everything looked good as new.

Mark handed him a pen that had rolled onto the floor. ‘We still meeting up tonight?’

Gary couldn’t help but notice how uncertain Mark sounded.

‘We don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ Gary said, thinking that Mark’s uncertainty came from not wanting to meet up anymore.

‘Do _you_ want to?’

‘Only if you do.’

‘I don’t want to pressure you into meeting up.’

‘You’re . . . not?’ Gary was starting to feel uncertain himself now. ‘Do _you_ feel pressured to meet up?’

‘I don’t.’ Seeing that Gary had lost the thread of the conversation, Mark added, ‘Same time tonight then?’

The piece of paper that Mark had given Gary weighed nothing, and yet Gary felt it press against his thigh like a promise. He’d taken the song to mean no more than a playful joke, the kind of thing you exchange with friends at Christmas if you’re into that sort of thing, and yet Gary was starting to wonder if there was more to it. He had mates like that, who hid their feelings behind banter and sarcasm.  

‘Gary? Midnight tonight?’ Mark reiterated.

Maybe Mark was a bit like that too.

Gary nodded once. ‘Midnight, got it.’

Mark responded with nothing but a smile, and Gary found himself wishing he knew what it meant.

|||

Mark and Gary spent the next few weeks meeting up every night. Initially Mark only asked Gary to draw his Mystery Objects, but soon the staplers and kettles turned into references from books and magazines, and later even live objects such as Professor Anderson’s goldfish. Gary thought he was doing a decent job.

As if spending so much time with Mark at night wasn’t enough, they spent more and more time together during lessons. In their optional Pottery module, Mark cracked up so hard at Gary accidentally creating a phallic symbol instead of an earthenware vase that they were both suspended for two days. During one weekend, Mark literally kept bumping into Gary in the art supplies store at the other side of the road. (Gary assumed it was because the store was so bloody tiny.) Mark’s knee still brushed Gary’s leg every time they were in Music History together.

Finally, the drawing lessons with Vic had vastly improved too: each time their evil professor made a negative comment about one of Gary’s drawings, Mark would give his thigh a little squeeze. This always made Gary fuck up the next drawing, which would then result into yet another lecture from Vic. It soon became a never-ending cycle of insults and thigh squeezes.

‘You never did tell me what you wanna do after you graduate,’ Gary told Mark after Vic had given them another evil, penetrating glare. They were working on a still life of pieces of fruit. It was incredibly boring.

Mark erased a bit of fruit with the back of his pencil. His lemons looked much better and juicier than Gary’s. ‘I told everyone in fresher’s week, remember? During our first lesson together?’

‘I wasn’t paying attention,’ Gary lied. He had, but he wanted Mark to tell him again in person.

‘I wanna set up me own label and, you know, release an album.’ Mark did something with his pencils that gave the pieces of fruit in his drawing a neat shine. When Gary tried to recreate it, it made his lemons look like oddly shaped disco balls. Mark went on, ‘Maybe write for other artists if I can. I don’t have to become mega-successful, ‘s long as I can pay me bills making music I’ll be happy.’

‘So you’re not ‘pop’, then?’

‘I never said that. A song don’t have to be popular to be pop music. Or successful.’ Mark sharpened one of his pencils. ‘I think I’m more of a blend of different styles, anyway. Imagine how cool it’d be to release an indie record one year and do full-on pop the next.’

‘Or the other way around.’

‘Bit like Kylie, innit?’

Gary pretended to be looking very hard at his drawing when Vic kept staring at them. ‘I wish you’d play me something. A song _you_ did, mind.’

‘I wrote you a song a while back, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah, but — I wish I could hear that song you did for your application.’ Gary tried to draw one of the grapes in the still life, but it ended up looking quite squashed.

‘I’ve told ya, it wasn’t very good.’

‘ _Oh_.’

‘Next term, okay? Promise.’ Mark looked Gary in the eyes then, intensely, and Gary’s hand slipped in sheer he-didn’t-know-what. There was now a thick, black stripe in the middle of Gary’s apple. They both tried erasing it, but it was already too late: Vic snatched Gary’s artwork from the desk and tore it up.

‘Try again,’ their professor spat at them before ordering a student to stop eating the grapes.

Reluctantly, Gary started over. Mark’s hand remained on his thigh for the rest of the lesson.

|||

Gary had lost track of the amount of times he and Mark had met up here, in classroom 3.17 on the top floor; so much so, in fact, that the door no longer jammed. As per usual, all but one easel had been shoved into a corner. Mark’s art supplies formed a neat little pile on a desk.

Mark’s Mystery Objects weren’t there. There was now a stool where Mark’s bag should be, and Gary felt a strange sense of dread as he tried to imagine what would be asked of him tonight. Could Mark have brought a nude model? He wouldn’t put it past him after all the things they’d drawn previously. (Yesterday, a bicycle. The day before that, an actual _dog_.)

Gary made a worried face. He found Mark adjusting the stool so that the seating area was a bit higher up. ‘What’s happening here?’

‘We’re gonna try somethin’ a bit different tonight,’ Mark said before sitting down. He was wearing a different outfit than that morning, tight jeans and a simple black t-shirt. He looked amazing in it. ‘I want you to draw me. As in, _me_ , sat on this stool here.’

Gary’s heart tightened. Already, a million different thoughts were running through his mind.

He was rubbish at drawing people. He hated it. He’d done it in Vic’s lessons and not enjoyed it. He just didn’t _get_ it. Why draw someone if you could easily just take a photograph? Indeed, why bother at all? And worse still (!), drawing Mark would involve _looking_ at him. A lot. And it’s not that Gary didn’t like looking at Mark (he did), but he preferred doing so when Mark wasn’t aware of it. (Which he knew sounded creepy. But still.)

‘Why?’ Gary asked. His voice sounded small. He felt an instant need to leave.

‘Cos I think you can do it.’

‘Yeah, but why — I mean —’ He gestured vaguely at Mark’s body. (So hot. _Ugh_.) ‘Why . . . you?’

Mark looked disappointed. ‘Would you rather draw someone else?’

Gary couldn’t muster up the courage to say ‘no’ in case he sounded too keen, so he shook his head.

‘Good. Use any materials you like. You have until I get bored of sitting in the same position. _Go_.’

Drawing Mark turned out to be incredibly tricky. Gary knew nothing about anatomy at all (he _really_ never paid any attention at school, bless him), but in his eyes Mark was perfectly proportioned. His legs were bang-on the right size. His upper body, for as far as he could tell with all that fabric blocking the view, was exquisitely shaped. His face couldn’t be faulted. How could Gary ever translate all of that perfection into a drawing?

The fact that Mark was looking at him throughout the entire session wasn’t helping, either, and his artwork looked like shit by the time Mark decided to get up and see what Gary had conjured up.

Mark looked at his artwork with an odd expression on his face. ‘It’s very . . . unique,’ he said unconvincingly. When he saw Gary struggle with his sarcasm he went on, ‘It’s shit, Barlow.’

‘Ah.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Gary flushed. ‘No, it’s all right.’

‘Have you been looking properly?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘Then what’s up with this line here?’ Mark pointed at a part of the artwork that Gary had spent a lot of time on. ‘Or here?’ He pointed at another. Gary couldn’t see what was wrong with it. It wasn’t smudged or squiggly.

Gary shrugged. ‘Dunno. I just drew what I saw.’

‘ _Mm_.’ Mark was silent as he ruminated on an idea that had suddenly popped into his head. He looked at the artwork hard, then proceeded to give Gary the same, questioning look. It made Gary feel very small and incompetent.

‘What’s that look for?’ Gary said insecurely.

‘I — may know something that could help you get better,’ Mark said. For a time, his voice sounded as uncertain as Gary felt.

Gary swallowed. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’   

All the previous uncertainty in Mark’s eyes had gone as if he had made up his mind about something very secret and important. ‘ _Yes_.’

‘O—kay? And what’s that then?’ A pause. ‘Hang on, Mark, what’re you — _Mark_ —’

Almost comically, Gary watched with wide-open eyes how Mark took off his shirt like they were in a goddamn porno. He threw his shirt over an easel and put his hands on his perfect hips. His cheeks had flushed red almost instantaneously, but Gary was so busy rudely staring at the rest of him that he hadn’t noticed.

‘Draw me like this,’ Mark said, demonstratively waving a hand at himself as if he took his shirt off in front of classmates all the time. (He didn’t, FYI.)

Gary wasn’t sure whether he should stare at Mark’s perfectly flat belly or that undeniably beautiful chest of his, so he decided to look him up and down. Many times. Mark was super sexy shirtless.

Mark took Gary’s spontaneous speechlessness to mean that Gary was agreeing with the plan, so he returned to his seat. (Even his back was sexy. _God_.)

‘I’m givin’ you five minutes,’ Mark said. ‘Good luck.’

When Gary finally found his voice again, it sounded weird and croaky. And nervous as fuck.

Feeling a tad lightheaded, Gary found a clean stool and decided to sit on it. ‘I don’t —’ He broke off, and cleared his throat. ‘I — I don’t understand why — I mean, _shirtless_?’ – The word ‘shirtless’ came out all squeaky – ‘Does that actually help?’

Once the words left his mouth, Gary no longer knew why he’d asked the question. He knew the answer already, of course. Vic invited a professional nude model to school a couple of weeks ago and although it was dead awkward, it actually . . . helped. Genuinely. Once Gary had blocked out the odd smell(s) of nakedness, Gary was actually able to draw something half-decent.

Mark smelled amazing.

Selfishly thinking that Gary had already answered his own question, Mark wordlessly turned on the timer.

Mark being shirtless created a strange juxtaposition of focus and aimlessness. Seeing Mark like that, so half-naked and sweaty, made Gary notice things he’d never seen before, like the perfect, almost erotic line of his stomach, and his n— _well_. Let’s not go there, for now. At the same time, it made Gary’s heart beat _so_ fast that he had lost every sense of creativity. It was as if he didn’t know how to hold a pen anymore. When he looked at Mark’s chest, he not only saw an object that he had to draw, but a large canvas of flesh that he wanted to do unspeakable things to. He would, if Mark let him.

Time crept by slowly, and when Gary looked at his easel again he felt his stomach tighten. It looked like absolute shit, his drawing did.

In an act of surrender Gary put the cap back on his expensive brush pen and let his ink-stained hands drop onto his lap. ‘Christ. I can’t do this, mate,’ he sighed. ‘I might as well drop out now, to be honest. I mean, look at that! Even my mate Rob could do better than that, it’s so bad!’ he said as he vaguely gestured at his easel without really looking at it. He couldn’t _bear_ to anymore.

‘Don’t be silly!’ Mark said, hopping off his stool to have a look at whatever Gary’s hands had conjured up. He neglected to put his shirt back on and went over to where Gary was sat.

Gary decided to focus very hard on a suspicious stain on the ceiling. If he looked at his drawing he would die of shame, and if he looked at Mark – who was suddenly very close, and still very shirtless – he would probably get a heart attack. (Or worse, a hard-on.) How Gary had even m _anaged_ to get something vaguely resembling a human being on paper he did not know. _God_ , Mark was hot. And shirtless. Fucking hell.

Mark scratched the back of his head while he ‘inspected’ Gary’s work. There was really nothing to say other than, ‘You’re right, it _is_ bad, innit?’

Gary knew it to be true, but it still hurt. If he kept on churning out crap drawings like this, his chances of enrolling into Year Two would drop down to zero percent. His chances of ever getting a record deal would be even lower.

‘Thanks, mate. That’s really helpful, that,’ he said petulantly.

‘Hang on, I’m doing me best ‘ere.’ Mark put his hands on his sides while he tried to think of a more positive thing to say. It made the muscles in his arms stand out a bit. He was sweating as well, and it gave his biceps – if you could call them that – a neat sort of shine. Gary reckoned he should probably have noticed that a bit earlier.

Mark went on, ‘I, erm, like the way you used the entire paper.’ He bit his lip, embarrassed. ‘Does that help?’

‘No.’

‘Not even a little?’

‘No.’

‘Awright.’ Mark scratched the back of his head again. He did that a lot when he was thinking?) ‘What — what is it that makes you — ( _sigh_ ) what makes it hard?’ he asked, deliberately slowly so that he wouldn’t say something that might upset Gary.

Gary shrugged. ‘Dunno, mate. I just can’t do it, is all.’

‘Yeah, but you couldn’t play the piano at first either, could ya?’

‘That’s different.’ – Mark raised his eyebrows as if to say, _Really?_ – ‘I dunno, I guess I just . . . don’t know what a human looks like, not really. I mean, I know what _you_ look like, obviously, cos you’re right there,’ – He glanced at Mark’s half naked body and nearly knocked over his easel – ‘But it — it just doesn’t make any _fucking_ sense. I just can’t get me proportions right, is what it is,’ he added with a small nod at his canvas.

‘Can you still remember how you wrote your first song? Or your best one?’

Of course he did, he’d never forget it. He was in his bedroom when suddenly this beautiful melody got stuck in his head. It wasn’t even one he’d heard over the radio; it was his, completely and utterly. He immediately stopped what he was doing and got out his cheap, hand-me-down keyboard he bought for a tenner in Chester and turned on the recorder and played. Once he had the melody down, he sat on his bed with a notebook and wrote and wrote and wrote until he came up with the right lyrics for the song. It took another five days to perfect the track and re-record it on his Dictaphone in between lessons, but the final product was perfect.

Gary told Mark so. He half-wanted to ask Mark whether he was ever going to put his clothes back on, but he decided against it in the end: Mark was the prettiest thing in the room right now.

Everything in that classroom was messy and ink-stained and dirty — all the things he didn’t like about art school. He could never become an artist, not in that manner anyway. If you wrote about your heart being broken there was no hiding behind random smudges of colour and dried paint, and he really liked that about music. Sure, people were always going to interpret your work in a different way, but a sad song was a sad song. A sad painting could mean anything.

‘Awright.’ Mark nodded as if lost in thought. ‘So did you instantly know how to write this song or did you, erm, you know, have this, sort of, _process_ like, “Okay, I’ve wrote the chorus now, now I just need to do the verses?” Cos that’s how _I_ do it, usually.’

‘I suppose so, yeah. I do remember the second verse being an absolute bitch to get right.’

‘So who told you about this? That songs are divided into parts?’

Gary shrugged. ‘You kinda find out by listening to them, don’t you? ‘S no point becoming a writer if you don’t ever listen to a good tune, is there?’

‘A-ha!’ Mark exclaimed, which caught Gary unawares. ‘It’s the same thing with art, you see.’

Gary didn’t. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I mean, do you ever actually ever look at people? You know, not just _look_ at them,’ Mark explained when Gary frowned at him, affronted, ‘but watch them. Observe how they work and act.’ 

Gary scoffed. ‘I’ve told you, Mark, I’m not an artist—‘

But Mark cut him off. ‘We’ve been through this, Barlow, it don’t matter if you’re an artist or not, you’re not gonna be accepted into your second year if you don’t pass this class,’ he said, not cruelly. He nodded at Gary’s easel and did that hands-on-his-sides thing again that drove Gary round the fucking bend. (Because it made Mark look like a fucking know-it-all. Not because it was hot. Oh no.) ‘Get rid of that, we’re gonna start all over.’

‘What? No way, mate.’

Gary was about to argue that there was an assignment for Music History that needed his immediate attention, but then Mark asked him to touch him. (!)

‘Touch me, c’mon,’ Mark reiterated. He gestured at himself nonchalantly. Like he wasn’t half-naked and dead attractive and right. fucking. there.

‘W-why?’ Gary stammered. He hoped he hadn’t just turned red. He probably had.

Was he hearing all of this right or had the smell of paint and ink gone to his head?

‘You clearly have no idea how to look at a person artistically so perhaps this’ll make you understand.’ Mark tore Gary’s drawing off his easel, tape and all, and replaced it with an empty sheet of cheap paper that he found on the floor. ‘It’s like when we was asked to sculpt these cuddly toys and we had to describe to each other how they felt before startin’,’ he added randomly, as if that was going to make his idea sound any less weird!   

 ‘Are you asking me to make a sculpture of you now?’ Gary was almost shouting now. He wasn’t sure why. ‘We’re not in a fucking Lionel Richie video, Mark. It’s Drawing I have to pass, remember? Three hundred sketches per week?’ he reminded him.

‘Right, cos you did such a good job at drawing me, didn’t ya?’ Mark said sarcastically.

‘It’s . . . impressionistic,’ Gary mumbled.

‘You gave me three arms. And a beer belly.’

Mark was right about that. He wasn’t sure how he’d done it, but his drawing was bloody awful, worse even than all the drawings he’d churned out for Vic this month. He needed a miracle and he needed it now.

‘You said you can’t write a good song if you don’t know what a good song sounds like,’ Mark said, at which Gary nodded. ‘D’you think Da Vinci got better at art by drawing people off the top of his head? That Van Gogh just _knew_ which colours to use? It don’t work like that. The reason your drawing’s so — below average is cos you wasn’t looking hard enough. You think you can just look at a person once and fill in the gaps on your own?’

Mark’s stare was so intense that Gary had to look away.

He didn’t think a person’s eyes could be so blue before meeting Mark. Mark’s eyes were the same colour as the ocean, and Gary would probably do a rubbish job at mixing the right colours to get a similar shade.

‘That’s not how you write songs, is it?’ Mark asked finally.

‘No. No, it’s not.’

‘Then touch me.’

Gary sighed in surrender and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had been talked around, of course he had. ‘ _Fine_. But I’m telling you, it won’t work.’

Gary got off his stool, which he immediately regretted. Did actually he have to get off his stool in order to touch Mark? Was it making him look too happy to get his hands on his classmate?

He looked at his stool, but Mark had already shoved it out of the way.

This was awful. Everything was awful. He’d never touched another guy in his _life_ and now he was supposed to just act like he wasn’t burning up just thinking about it?

‘It will, trust me,’ said Mark. ‘Anyway, I’m not tellin’ you to do it with every single person you meet, obviously. That’d be weird. And, you know, you’d probably be arrested for assault. But you have my permission, so there ya go.’

Gary frowned. He could still not look at Mark properly, so he decided to stare at his own feet instead. ‘You give a lot of people permission to touch you, then? Artistically speaking.’

‘Only if I like ‘em.’

Gary’s eyes flickered up at that. ‘You don’t like me,’ he said matter-of-factly, almost as if he wanted to trick Mark into disagreeing with him.

He wondered if Mark did this sort of thing all the time. Pose half-naked. Let other people touch him. He’d once heard vague rumours that Mark used to be a child model and that he still dabbled in modelling until very recently. That they were the sort of photos you find in certain magazines — tasteful ones. It would probably explain why Mark had such a perfect smile.

Mark shrugged. ‘I never said that. Also, you’ve got a nice face. That helps, you know. Just put your hands here.’

‘You’re so skinny, I’m scared I’m gonna knock you over or something,’ Gary stammered. He glanced at Mark’s belly – so flat and soft and everything _his_ body wasn’t – and he was pretty sure he’d just felt his own stomach drop. He mumbled, ‘And I don’t have a nice face.’

‘I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that comment. And see? You’re paying attention now.’

Gary was nervous as fuck, but he did it anyway. Shaking for reasons that he did not understand, he gently placed his hands on Mark’s belly. He started out with the tips of his fingers and ended up with his hands flat on Mark’s skin when Mark moved forward just an inch. His hands looked stupidly pale compared to Mark’s tanned body.

He could hear Mark exhale. ‘ _Oof_. Cold,’ Mark said.

‘S-sorry.’

Gary could feel tiny hairs underneath his palms that he didn’t think he had to draw, so he moved his hands up Mark’s upper body slowly. He felt silly doing it – and hot, _so_ hot – but Mark was right, it _was_ helping: before, Gary didn’t notice the curve of Mark’s back or the way his chest formed a perfectly straight line all the way down. Or up. Gary’s hands were definitely moving up. Not down. He did _not_ want to think about that. 

Gary could hear Mark breathe in sharply as he touched what he assumed was a sensitive spot, and he cringed as he felt his own cock twitch in his trousers. _Christ._ (It was the skin just below Mark’s ribs. _Could_ people be sensitive there?) Gary ignored his own body and recited his to-do list for tomorrow as his hands moved higher still.

First period, Music Theory. He still had to get through chapter three of his textbook and write a short analysis of his least favourite song. (Why did he have to be such a bloody virgin? He bet most people his age could see a half-naked body without getting a fucking hard-on.) Second period, Painting. Not even worth thinking about. (Was Mark still a virgin?) Third period, Performance. They were going to play the organ tomorrow. He’d be good at that, Gary thought. (Surely not? Mark definitely didn’t _act_ like a virgin. He was way too confident for that.) Fourth period, off. Fifth and sixth period, Drawing. He could still call in sick. That was a normal thing to do in college, wasn’t it? (Then again, if Gary had a body like Mark’s he’d probably be dead confident too. He felt so strong and soft.) Seventh period, Songwriting. Now _that_ was something he was looking forward to. (He wondered what Mark would feel like _on_ him.)

Gary’s hands rested at Mark’s pecs a little longer than strictly necessary. They were not that big really – Mark didn’t have a lot of muscle on him, period – but Gary liked the way they looked anyway. His chest was flat and unrefined and boyish but there was just something about the way his collarbones stuck out that made Gary want to kiss him until his nipples were erect.

He had _not_ just thought that out loud.

‘You okay, Mr. Barlow? You look a bit flustered,’ Mark said. His lips were parted and a very subtle blush had flushed over his cheeks. Gary didn’t see it. (He also didn’t notice how hard Mark’s heart was beating against his palms.)

Gary swallowed. He had to say something to take the edge off, to forget about how incredibly turned on he was feeling. Something casual. He could be that, casual. ‘You, erm, you’ve got very soft skin, Marko.’

_Jesus_.

‘I mean, er, very good skin for someone who . . . smokes.’

_Ugh_.

‘Stopped smoking weeks ago. And you’ve never touched someone before, have you?’ Mark didn’t sound like he was judging.

Gary shook his head. ‘No.’ He let his hands drop to his sides and folded his arms when he didn’t know what to do with them. ‘I mean, I haven’t. Why’d you stop smoking?’

‘Cos it bothered you.’

‘It . . . didn’t?’

‘It did, though.’

Gary gave in. ‘Yeah, it did. To stop smoking for one person, though . . .’

Mark shrugged indifferently. (Still shirtless. God.) ‘Maybe one day I’ll feel like kissing you. You know, for artistic reasons.’ He’d said it so quickly that Gary hardly had time to recover until Mark went on, ‘See if you can sketch me one more time. I’m givin’ you two minutes. Go.’

But Gary was still thinking about Mark. Wanting to kiss him. _Mark_. ‘You want to kiss me?’

Mark looked at the timer. ‘One minute forty . . .’

‘All right, all right . . . Sit down, will you? I can’t concentrate with you so close.’

Mark smirked and did as he was told.  

Gary was too concentrated on his work to notice that it had started raining. A heavy shower of raindrops was visible in the light of the streetlamps on the lawn down below. Rain hit the windows hard, creating soothing background music that was not enough to drown out the fast beating of Gary’s heart. A unity between painter and model was slowly taking shape on paper, with Gary’s drawings becoming better and better every time the timer went off and Mark asked him to make another. And another, and another, until the floor around him was covered in drawings. It created a neat little island of paper, with the old easel as its palm tree.

Perhaps, indeed, the only reason Gary was suddenly doing so well was because he had touched Mark and been close to him — but why would that even matter? He was finally creating pieces of art he knew even Vic wouldn’t be able to reject.

Mark was Gary’s best work, unquestioningly.

For the umpteenth time that term, the timer rang for the final time. Mark put his shirt back on by way of making clear that their session was over, and they cleaned the classroom like they always did. Having by now done so for over twenty times, the classroom looked spotless within minutes. Gary looked at his watch, and he knew that the caretaker would be at the other side of campus by now. They wouldn’t be spotted.

They walked to Gary’s dorm room in silence; comfortable silence, because they’d both had a pleasant evening and didn’t want to ruin it with words. As usual, they spent a few moments looking at each other in front of Gary’s dorm room.

‘I really enjoyed tonight, Mark,’ said Gary, clutching his drawings tight, ‘thanks again.’

Mark always said goodbye by saying, ‘You’re welcome, Gary’, and heading off in the opposite direction, but he lingered tonight.

‘You know, I kinda wish it was _me_ who’s rubbish at art,’ he said instead.

‘And why’s that?’

‘So I could maybe talk you into taking your shirt off,’ Mark said with a wink, and he left. ‘See ya, Mr. Barlow.’

Gary watched Mark go until he disappeared into the shadows.


	4. It Was The Same Scene From A Kaleidoscope Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking such a long time to update.

Strangely, seeing Mark naked did wonders for the boys’ relationship. They were spending more time together than ever before and had fast become inseparable. They weren’t lovers or boyfriends, but mates, and that was already much more than Gary had ever bargained for. Right now, he needed little else.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Brown and orange leave covered the lawn outside, and the sun had disappeared from the sky early. It was the final lesson before the weekend; a dull painting lesson made even duller by the mood-dampening melancholy of the weather. The students had suitably been asked to paint a still life of chestnuts on a bed of leaves.

Gary finally felt like he was getting somewhere with his painting when he felt something small and tickly creep up his arms. He assumed it was a fly and ignored it. Seconds later the fly reappeared on his upper arm, just below the sleeve of his t-shirt, and he waved his hand at it without looking up from his artwork.

‘Can someone close the bloody window?’ he said to no-one in particular. ‘I can’t concentrate with all these— _Jesus!_ ’

Gary nearly fell off his stool when he felt the same sensation against the back of his ear. A guilty rush shot to an area of his body that shouldn’t even have been active at this time of day when he realised it wasn’t a fly at all.

Once Gary had recovered from almost falling, he saw that Mark was watching him with a wide grin on his face and a small, dry paintbrush in his hand.

Gary anxiously glanced at Professor Oliver.

‘W-what’re you doing?’ he stammered when Mark reached out to him with the brush again.

‘Just seeing how ticklish you are.’

Mark ignored Gary’s protests and pressed the tip of his brush softly against Gary’s arms. (It felt extremely nice. Especially with Mark looking at him like _that_.)

Goosebumps appeared. Mark moved the brush higher and higher up Gary’s arms, skipped his clad shoulders, and watched how Gary tensed up when the brush reached his face again.

‘ _Ahh_ ,’ Gary moaned pathetically when the brush tickled his jawline, and he snatched the brush out of Mark’s hand before he could give Gary a semi. (Gary had very sensitive skin. He couldn’t help it.)

‘Work on your painting,’ Gary said bossily, even though he had very much enjoyed that. He demonstratively put the brush on the end of his desk so that Mark couldn’t reach and pretended to be very busy staring at the still-life.

‘You’re ticklish,’ Mark said as though this was some sort of life-changing revelation.

Gary’s eyes flicked to Professor Oliver again. She was lost in a book about pointillism.

‘So? A lot of people are. I bet _you_ are,’ Gary added.

‘Definitely not.’

Gary looked at their professor again. She had conveniently dozed off.

‘D’you know what, mate,’ Gary said, suddenly feeling very brave and forgetting that they were in a classroom with people all around them, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He took the biggest, thickest brush he could find and dipped it in water before tipping it against the yellow circle on his watercolour set. He pointed it at Mark threateningly. ‘Give me your arm.’

‘Threatening me now, are ya?’

‘Arm. Now.’

Mark did as he was told and rested his arm on the table. ‘I’m telling ya, you won’t be getting a reaction off me,’ Mark warned him, with special emphasis on the word ‘reaction’.

There was a mischievous glint in his eyes that Gary decided he liked very much.

‘We’ll see about that.’

Gary pressed the tip of his wet brush against Mark’s palm. He looked at Mark for a reaction, but nothing happened as he painted a thick, yellow line up the inside of Mark’s arm.

He dipped his brush in water again. The line was moving up Mark’s upper arm now, past his naked shoulder — still nothing. He moved his brush to Mark’s face – the tiny little hairs had almost run out of paint by now – and he painted a light streak of watery yellow down Mark’s temples and past his cheeks.

A solitary drop of water ran down Mark’s chin as he did so. It clung to his skin, and Gary felt like kissing it off of him.

It made Gary think of the things he’d fantasised about, of M—

‘HEATHENS!’

Professor Oliver had crept up behind the boys and smacked them with her book. As Professor Oliver was known to be the kindest teacher in the entire school, this made everyone look up from their work and whisper at each other as though the world as they knew it was coming to an end.

‘Wasting paint like that! Go wash it off,’ she shrieked, and she motioned the lads out hysterically.

When Mark and Gary reached the empty restroom next door a minute or two later, they burst out laughing.

‘Did you hear her?’ Mark’s laugh sounded like sunshine. A drop of yellow paint had stained his shirt. ‘I thought she was gonna kick us out. She’s usually so kind as well.’

‘Bless. I guess she really likes paint, then.’

‘Be weird if she didn’t, wouldn’t it.’

‘ _Hm_. So you’re not ticklish, then?’ Gary said when the laughter had died down.

‘Guess not.’

Mark yanked an ecologically unfriendly amount of fresh paper towels out of the dispenser on the wall. He held it underneath a running tap until the ball of paper looked soaked and heavy.

Gary watched Mark scrub the paint off his arms with the paper towel. Being watercolour, the paint disappeared quickly. It almost made Gary sad to see it happen; Mark looked amazing with paint on his body like that, like Gary had marked him. Made him his own, even for just a minute.

Mark held out the bundle of paper towels. ‘D’you mind?’ Mark nodded at the blank space on the wall where a mirror should be. (Budget cuts.)

‘N-no, not at all.’

There was a silence that neither of them knew how to fill when Gary ran the paper towels under the tap again.  Again he felt like something special had happened during that brief moment of painting Mark yellow with his watercolours, but he didn’t know how to mention it.

‘You’re shaking,’ Mark pointed out while Gary worked his magic. He was touching Mark so gently that it took a very long time to get the paint off. ‘Are you cold?’

‘Y-yeah,’ Gary lied absently. He was trying very hard not brush Mark’s lips with his fingertips.

‘Me too.’ Mark was quiet, then, ‘Can I ask you somethin’?’

‘Um, yeah? Sure.’

Gary managed to carefully wipe the last smears of paint off Mark’s reddened skin and threw the paper towel into the nearest bin. He absently dried his hands on his already ruined trousers.

‘D’you have a, you know, girlfriend? Boyfriend?’

Gary flushed. This seemed an odd conversation to be having in the middle of a restroom. ‘N-no. Why?’

‘I’d just never seen you with someone before.’

Gary leaned against the sink by way of making himself look more confident. He never usually talked about his relationships, or lack thereof. It just wasn’t a thing that people were interested enough to ask him. (Well, his _mum_ was, but she was his mum.)

‘Do _you_ have a . . . ?’

‘Boyfriend? No. No girlfriend, either,’ he added when he saw Gary’s questioning look.

The face that Mark made when he said ‘girlfriend’ made Gary think he wasn’t that interested in girls at all.

‘Have you ever . . . been in one? A relationship, I mean?’

Mark nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘ _Ah_ ,’ Gary said, disappointed.

‘It wasn’t very good,’ Mark explained quickly.

‘Why not?’

Mark shrugged indifferently. ‘I don’t like saying this ‘bout other people, all right, but the guy was a right prick. He met this lad who was dead posh at a party of a mate of ours and he went off with him. Cheated on me and everything. The sex was rubbish as well,’ he added casually. ‘The only reason he went out with me was cos I was the only gay guy at work, can you believe that? I didn’t date anyone for about a year after that, I was completely traumatised.’

But Gary was still thinking about Mark. And sex.

‘W-why was the sex rubbish?’ he asked.

‘That’s a bit of a personal question, innit?’

‘Sorry.’

But Mark shrugged. ‘It just didn’t work, physically. It’s nice when you have a partner who’s a bit taller and older than you, I guess. Makes me feel wanted.’

Gary swallowed. ‘And he wasn’t? Your ex?’

‘No.’ Mark was silent, then, ‘What about you? Relationship-wise?’

Gary touched the back of his head. ‘Er, nothing, really. I guess I just haven’t found the right one yet.’

As the words escaped his mouth, Gary immediately realised how silly he sounded. He didn’t believe in the notion that there was this one person made for him in the stars at all — it’s just a lie he had rehearsed in case he was ever asked why he, at the ancient age of nineteen, had never been in a relationship.

Mark looked impressed. ‘You really believe in that stuff? The One and all that.’

‘I guess.’

Gary wanted to bring up the fact that they should probably head back to the classroom, but something in the way Mark was looking at him, with those big, blue, questioning eyes, kept him rooted to the spot.

‘What would the One look like for you?’ Mark said. He noticed that he had missed a smear of paint on his wrist, so he licked his finger and scrubbed the smear off. It made Gary think terrible things about Mark’s tongue, and he had to try his hardest not to list ‘My first boyfriend-slash-the-One has to have a suckable tongue’ as one of his requirements.

‘Brown hair would be nice,’ Gary said absently. ‘I mean,’ he quickly added when he remembered that Mark _himself_ had brown hair, ‘It doesn’t have to be brown. Blonde’s good too.’

Mark made a face that was impossible to interpret.

‘I see. And I agree, blonde hair’s _very_ attractive, innit?’ Mark said purposefully, with a quick blink-or-you-miss-it glance at Gary’s ash blonde hair. ‘What else are you into?’

‘Er?’

‘I mean aesthetically. You said you didn’t like guys who are taller than you?’

‘I – I did?’

‘Oh yeah.’

Mark had come a little closer. If someone was to come in and see them, they’d look very intimate for two classmates who had spent the first few weeks of term hardly talking to each other.

‘What else?’

Gary’s eyes lingered on Mark’s chest, and the first thing that came out was, ‘Skinny. Not that I’m shallow, of course,’ he stammered.

‘Of course not.’

Just as Gary was about to give another requirement that very much fitted Mark’s description, one of their classmates knocked on the door and made whatever tension had been in the air disappear.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mark asked their classmate, Tom, once he’d turned and faced him.

‘It’s Mrs. Oliver,’ Tom said, sounding out of breath. ‘Says if you don’t come back she’ll burn all your art supplies.’ He had only just now spotted how close Mark and Gary were standing to each other, and squinted. ‘What’re you doing, anyway?’

‘Discussing the meaning of _The Fighting Temeraire_ ,’ Mark lied, deadpan. He subtly nudged Gary’s arm with his elbow. ‘Weren’t we, Gary?’

Gary nodded too enthusiastically. ‘Yeah.’ He had no idea what Mark was talking about, but joined him on his way back to the classroom anyway. When he sat down, his painting suddenly looked a lot better than it had before. He caught Mark’s eye, and realised.

He’d just admitted that he really, really liked Mark.

|||

The first years’ portfolio presentations were fast approaching. Gary had managed to hand in 300 drawings each week, and so felt great relief when Vic finally told him that he had completed his assignment just a week before presentations.

Time passes quickly when you’re dreading something, so very soon Gary woke up with dread pressing onto his chest. The feeling faded a little when he remembered that he had already selected his drawings and that there was little else he could do, but he still got dressed feeling extremely nervous.

Today was the day. Today, he was to present his best drawings.  

Gary had taken his first sip of tea when was a knock on the door. Gary glanced at the clock, fearing for a moment that it might be a teacher warning him that he was late for his presentation. Thankfully it was only 8:27. He had plenty of time to prepare still, if he wanted to.

He put his cup of tea on a table, opened the door and found Mark smiling back at him. He looked beautiful.

‘Hi,’ Mark said, suspiciously chipper even for him. He was wearing a sleeveless white shirt that reminded Gary of the shirt he had on when Gary first visited his dorm room. No doubt still preparing for his own presentation later that week, his shirt was covered in ink and faint traces of pencil. The sight made Gary’s stomach twist.

Mark saw Gary looking at his outfit, and he actually went and blushed. (Gary didn’t think Mark had it in him. People like Mark didn’t blush.) ‘Sorry for the shirt. I should’ve changed.’

‘I-it’s no big deal.’ Gary waved a hand at his room. ‘Would you like to come in? U-unless you have somewhere to be?’

‘N-no . . . I’m not keeping you from your work, am I?’

‘Haven’t got me presentation till ten.’

‘Oh, good, good . . .’

Gary let Mark inside. As he and Jason never got many visitors (well, Jason did, but he did a bloody good job at hiding it), there weren’t any extra seats so Mark and Gary had to sit on Jason’s immaculately made bed. They sat there in silence, about an arm’s length away, until Gary realised he hadn’t asked what brought Mark here.

‘So, er, Mark, was there something you needed to tell me?’

There was a palpable tension in the air that Gary had never felt before. It was the kind of tension he knew other people wrote songs about, even if he couldn’t quite remember what kind. He _should_ do, but the increasing fear that Mark was about to tell him that their partnership had come to an end was blocking out everything else.

He and Mark had been seeing each other a lot lately, and they hadn’t fallen out. Why was he experiencing this feeling of dread now?

( _Was_ it dread? He couldn’t tell.)

‘Just wanted to wish you luck, is all,’ Mark said, and he pressed his lips closed again as though he was stopping himself from saying anything else.

‘Um, okay.’

Another silence. Gary didn’t know how to fill it.

‘And,’ Mark went on after a sharp exhale, ‘I’m here to give you somethin’. For good luck.’

Gary glanced at Mark’s hands, but he didn’t seem to be holding anything that resembled a gift. ‘Okay? That’s nice. I guess?’

A moment passed, and Mark did nothing. Gary didn’t want to push him, but he _did_ have a presentation coming up at ten. ‘I’m, er, waiting?’

‘ _Eh?_ ’

‘You said you had a present,’ Gary pushed him.

‘ _Oh_. Yes. Yes, I did.’ Mark rubbed the back of his neck. If Gary didn’t know better, he’d say Mark was nervous. ( _Weird_.) ‘Close your eyes, I suppose.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a surprise.’

‘I hate surprises.’

‘You’ll like this one.’

Gary sighed. He highly doubted that he would, but he closed his eyes anyway.

Perhaps Mark had written Gary another song, that’d be nice. He liked songs. Or maybe he and Howard and Jase had all chipped in and bought him a new keyb— No, that was pushing it a little bit, wasn’t it? Gary couldn’t even afford a decent keyboard himself and _he’d_ spent all his weekends off school performing in bloody pubs at the age of fifteen.

He listened for Mark to get up and magically retrieve a gift-wrapped box from underneath Jason’s bed, but he heard nothing of the sort.

What Gary _did_ hear, was his own gasp of surprise when Mark cupped his face with his hands and kissed him.

He wasn’t making this up. Mark was kissing him.

Heat shot up Gary’s body. He could actually hear fireworks in the shape of his own heartrate.

Instantly his own hands crept up Mark’s back, the fabric of Mark’s shirt still sticky and wet underneath his touch. Mark’s own hands were in Gary’s hair.

He’d dreamed of this so often, of snogging Mark in the cupboard or in the back of a recording booth, so very scared of fucking it up and pushing Mark away from him.

Gary was often told by professors that he did not pay enough attention, but he did that day. Mark smelled of paint and tasted of peppermint, and his lips were the softest thing he had ever felt. His hands that lingered on the back of Gary’s neck were warm and gentle and remained so as they slid down Gary’s arms and tickled him.

The kiss wasn’t anything like how he’d imagined it.

It was nice and gentle and soft, so soft, and it was over before he knew it.

When Gary opened his eyes again, Mark had turned bright red.

Gary didn’t know what to say other than a very chuffed ‘What was that for?’

‘For good luck,’ Mark reiterated. (He looked really cute like that, all red-faced and kind of flustered.) ‘And because I wanted to.’

He took Gary’s hand in his, and Gary could feel himself melt into the bed. He felt that same spark he felt when they spend that eventful night in a cupboard, almost kissing but not quite — but multiplied. It felt like that, but better. So much better.

‘I want to be your boyfriend, Gary.’ Mark squeezed Gary’s hand tighter. ‘What’d you think?’

‘I —’ Gary had never been someone’s boyfriend before. He didn’t know what people did in relationships. He’d seen it in films and written songs about it but he had no idea what it would actually mean to be someone’s _someone_. A boyfriend. A lover. He was terrified of fucking it up and pushing Mark away with his inexperience and clumsiness.

Mark: ‘You don’t have to say ‘yes’ now if you need more time.’

Then again, would it really be any different from what he and Mark had going on now? Would it not be similar, except they’d do more kissing? And . . . touching? (He’d enjoy that a lot, touching Mark again _._ )

Silence, then, ‘ _God_ , I’d love to be your boyfriend, Mark.’

The smile that Mark flashed at Gary next made the butterflies in his stomach quadruple. Christ, that boy was beautiful.

‘I should warn you, though, Mark, I’ve never been in a relationship before. I may not be very good at being in one.’

‘I know, you said.’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

‘I don’t care if you’ve been in thirty relationships or none, Gary. I’ll still like you. I’ll still be in love with you, like I have ever since we met.’ – Gary’s mouth fell open a little – ‘I wanna do the things that we’ve both wrote crap love songs about. Together. Who cares if we have to take things slow cos you’re inexperienced? I know I don’t.’

Gary’s face had turned fire truck red. ‘And what if I don’t wanna take things slow?’ (Did he wanna take things slow? He didn’t know. Maybe he did.) (Probably not.)

‘Then . . . we don’t. Your call.’

But Gary was already thinking about something else. ‘You said you liked me since we first met.’

‘I did, yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Didn’t get the chance, did I? You were always hiding behind your easel every time I tried to have a good look at ya in the first weeks of term.’

‘I thought you wanted to look at my drawings.’

‘I didn’t.’

Gary chuckled. He rubbed his thumb over Mark’s hand as if not quite believing that Mark’s hand was his to hold. ‘I kinda feel like I’m in need of some more luck, you know,’ he said shyly. ‘For later.’

‘Are you saying you’d like me to kiss you again, Gary?’

‘ _Mm_.’

They kissed until it was time for Gary to leave.

|||

The walk to the classroom where the presentation was taking place was a dull one, and normally Gary would not have enjoyed it. On the back of a long kissing session with Mark, however, everything in the school’s long, winding corridors looked beautiful. He loved how the sunlight that fell through the windows made the walls change colour. The smell of the wood workshop that he passed reminded him no longer of lessons he dreaded but of the adventures he’d had this term. He could finally appreciate the art installations that used to puzzle him so much. There was a lightness in his step when he remembered the way Mark had kissed him.

Mark had a nice way of tilting his head and lifting his chin that made Gary push back until there was no more space left between them. They might as well have been one person if not for the fact that Mark felt and tasted so completely different; he was softer and needier, and unafraid to lift Gary’s shirt over his head.

Gary was still thinking about it when he entered the classroom, nervous as fuck but ready.

Every student was given a wall to stick their drawings on. There were four students in total who had to present that day, and Gary was last. Yesterday, he selected his best sketches from his sessions with Mark and Professor Vic, and added as his centrepiece a brand new artwork that he’d made only a week ago. The idea for the artwork came to him at the same time as the melody of a new song, so he asked Howard, who was very good with technology, to fit his assigned wall with some tiny speakers. Using modern 90s gadgetry, the song would play throughout his presentation. He was hoping it would give his presentation the artistic flair that it so badly needed.

His professors returned to the classroom after having deliberated the works of the previous student, and Gary had a quick glance at his own chest. He exhaled in relief when he saw that his shirt was still on the right way round.

When he looked up, he was back in his dorm room with Mark.

The way Mark touched his naked chest was out of this _world_. Mark was touching him only with the tips of his fingers and yet it felt electrifying, like a million little shots of adrenaline coursing through his veins each passing second.

Mark named every single part of Gary’s upper body that he loved, and Gary believed him.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Professor Vic told him, and Gary pressed PLAY after he remembered what he was there for.

It was hard to focus when Mark’s smell still lingered on his skin.

Gary cleared his throat. ‘I’m, er, I’m here to tell you about the sketches I’ve made this term. As some of you may know I’m not that good at drawing,’ – He glanced at Professor Vic – ‘but, I um, worked extremely hard to improve, and . . . d’you know what, I actually really like drawing now.’

Professor Anderson, his Performance teacher, was listening intently. He was a bald man with a kind face. He was known to be one of the school’s less serious professors, so almost everyone liked him. ‘What have you done to improve?’

‘Drew a lot, really.’ Anderson didn’t seem happy with that answer, so Gary went on, ‘I have a – a mate who made sure I made a certain amount of sketches every day so that helped.’

‘What did you draw?’

‘Just objects at first. Then people.’ He turned to the wall and started talking about the things he’d done. His Painting teacher, Mrs. Oliver, was busy making notes. ‘To the left and right are some of me sketches that I made over the past eight weeks, and in the middle is a piece I worked on quite recently that I hope shows how much I’ve improved. I made it with, er, charcoal pens.’

Vic had his usual poker face on. ‘Why the choice of materials?’

Gary had prepared this question with Jason earlier on. ‘I just like the way you can smudge your lines to create softer shadows than you would with ordinary pencils, really. It makes everything look that little bit more realistic.’

‘And the song?’

‘It’s what I came up with while I was working on the charcoal artwork.’ He thought about what Jason had told him. ‘The, er, song and drawing complement each other, they do. The song is quite soft, quite gentle, I think, and it’s the same feeling I got while working on me drawing. If it’d been a full-colour artwork I might not even have created this song.’

‘Songwriting wasn’t a part of the assignment,’ Vic pointed out.

Gary shrugged. He was in such a good mood that the remark didn’t bother him. ‘I just like being ambitious, me.’

‘You’ve certainly been ambitious working on your _grand pièce_ ,’ Mrs. Oliver said. She pointed her pen at the artwork. ‘The guy you drew must’ve owed you a massive favour. Did he pose for that?’

Gary blushed. His ‘grand pièce’ was an impressive A2 drawing of Mark from the chest down. Naked. In a very sensual position. (You couldn’t see his privates, though. Gary couldn’t even begin to think about how he would draw _that_. He’d probably get the size wrong as well.) (Mark looked like he might be a big guy.)

‘He posed for some of me sketches but not for the, er, full-sized one.’

The artwork reminded him of when he touched Mark for the first time. It was the most nervewrecking thing he’d ever been a part of.

He wanted to do it again and again.

‘So you didn’t use any references at all for the charcoal piece? Gosh, I really couldn’t tell,’ Vic said sarcastically, and Mrs. Oliver gave him a not-so-subtle nudge with her elbow.

Mark and Gary didn’t go further than kissing and touching that morning. Eventually, Mark rested his hands on Gary’s pecs (which were more sensitive than Gary thought — he had no idea he could get off from having his nipples touched like that) and closed his eyes as if restraining himself. He gave Gary’s lips one more savouring peck, and handed Gary his shirt.

‘Your presentation is in half an hour. Make me proud, Gaz.’

The song ended, and the professors nodded to each other as if agreeing that they’d seen enough.

‘We’ll just stop outside and deliberate, Gary,’ Mrs. Oliver said, and they left. Gary had no idea what the three of them were thinking.

Even now, nearly half an hour after they had kissed, Gary was still amazed at how natural he and Mark felt. How _good_ they were together. He’d always imagined that being kissed or touched by a boy would be dead awkward and that he would feel unattractive and experienced, but it was nothing like that. With Mark, it felt right and beautiful.

It’s funny what being in love can do to you, and right now Gary didn’t even care if his presentation had gone well or not. He’d kissed Mark, and that mattered more than anything.

But what mattered even more, was Mark’s reaction when he saw his artwork.

‘I like what you’ve done to me bum.’

Gary spun around to see Mark standing on the door threshold. He was looking at Gary’s artwork with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

‘Is this what I look like to you?’ Mark said as though he wasn’t sure whether he should be flattered or surprised.

‘Er . . . ?’ Gary didn’t feel like answering that question. How he saw Mark was not a conversation they should be having with their professors only one door away. ‘How can you tell it’s you?’ he said instead.

‘The proportions kinda give it away.’ Mark leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets. It was such a sexy, casual pose that it made Gary want to do something that involved yet more kissing and maybe also figuring out if he were able to lift Mark up. ‘There’s not many guys here who are as small as me. You _have_ made one error, though.’

‘I know, I should’ve used a reference to draw your legs. And the rest of you.’

Mark smirked like he knew something Gary didn’t. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Then what?’

‘Pass your presentation and I’ll tell ya.’

‘You could also just tell me _now_.’

Unfortunately Gary’s professors then returned along with the three other students that were assessed that morning. Vic shooed Mark out, and Mark left with a smug grin on his face.

In the next few seconds that followed, Gary felt a very eclectic mix of emotions. One, he wanted Mark to come back and hold his hand. Two, he had no idea what he would do if his professors told him it was game over. He could go back to performing on the club circuit, but then what?

Three, Mark. It’s what everything came down to in the end, and the only thing Gary genuinely cared about. Never mind his reduced chances of getting a record deal; would he and Mark still be together if he left? Would Mark still even like him? Inviting guests to campus was discouraged and even prohibited for first-years, and Mark didn’t look like he was good at returning calls. What if they grew apart?

Gary’s brain didn’t quite register it when Professor Vic called him by his full name. Judging by his classmates’ faces, they’d all passed. He was so terrified of this moment that he had completely blocked it out.

‘—fortunate that you made that charcoal piece, Mr. Barlow,’ Vic said. His voice sounded far away. It was as if Gary wasn’t really there. ‘It may just have granted you another term here.’

One of Gary’s classmates gave him a slap on the back, and everything came back into focus.

‘Sorry, what?’

Gary looked at his classmates. Why did they all look so chuffed? He glanced at his professors: they looked equally pleased. (Well, Vic didn’t.)

‘I don’t understand,’ Gary admitted.

Professor Oliver smiled at him. ‘You’ve passed, Gary. You no longer have to worry about Drawing. You’re through to next term.’

Pressure was instantly lifted off Gary’s shoulders, but none of it felt real. One moment now he was going to wake up with bad grades, and no boyfriend. This all wasn’t happening.

‘Seriously?’ he asked, not believing it.

‘Absolutely,’ said Professor Anderson. ‘You’ve more than proven your worth, Gary. It’s a shame you’re thinking about majoring in Music; you’ve developed a real knack for anatomy.’ (Seriously?) He turned to the rest of the students. ‘You should all be proud of yourselves, guys. I’ll be seeing you next term. You too, Gary,’ he added with a wink.  

He’d passed. He’d actually done it.

He’d gotten a good grade for his _drawings_ , and next term he was finally going to spend time singing and playing piano and composing songs and _God_ , he couldn’t wait. Today was full of little miracles.

Gary’s classmates took Anderson’s words as a sign to leave, and everyone filed out until there was only Gary and Professor Vic left. Watching Vic stand there with a sour look on his face, arms crossed over his chest as if he did not agree with his colleagues’ decision, Gary again felt the need to defend himself. Perhaps it’d all been a mistake. Vic could be winding him up.

Thankfully, Vic had already spoken before Gary could say something snarky.

‘I liked your song,’ Vic said reluctantly.

Gary waited for an apology for treating him like shit, a ‘well done you’, but having reached his quota of compliments for the day, Vic left without saying another word.

|||

‘I can't believe a Professor Vic gave you an actual compliment,’ Mark laughed half an hour later. He'd helped Gary take all his artworks off the wall and out of the classroom, and everything was now neatly stacked away in a box that was marked for removal underneath Jason's bed. As glad as Gary was to have passed this module, he didn't want to be reminded of it ever again. (Except perhaps the moments he spent drawing with Mark; those memories he _did_ want to keep.) He still didn’t know what to do with his charcoal drawing of Mark, though.

Mark saw Gary look at it. Jason's bed was covered in large piles of revision notes so they had nowhere to sit.

‘You could give it to me, you know, Gaz.’

‘Where would you put it?’

‘Dunno. Next to me bed maybe.’

‘And look at yourself before going to sleep every night?’

‘ _You_ keep it then. You could put it up there,’ Mark said with a nod at the ceiling.

‘I wouldn’t be doing much sleeping.’ Gary cleared his throat. ‘You never did tell me what's wrong with it, though, Mark.’

Mark chuckled at that, but annoyingly said nothing that would explain Gary's ‘error’ in making his artwork.

‘Is it the legs? It's the legs, isn't it?’

Mark made a face that Gary understood to mean he had guessed wrong.

‘The shadows, then.’

‘It’s not that either. It's what you _didn't_ draw,’ Mark teased. He was blushing a little.

Gary glanced at his artwork again, and for a moment he seriously thought that Mark was referring to his willy.

‘Wait, you mean your,’ – Gary mouthed the word ‘cock’, with a subsequent glance at Mark’s crotch – ‘I couldn't show up with a – a full-frontal nude drawing, could I? I got enough weird looks carrying that thing around campus as it is. Everyone thinks I’m gay now.’

‘You _are_ gay.’

‘Yeah, but I wasn’t _out_ yet.’

‘That’s not what it looked like when you stumbled out of that broom cupboard all those weeks ago. Anyway,’ said Mark, ignoring the incredulous look on Gary’s face, ‘It's not that either.’

‘Then what?’

For some inexplicable reason Mark then decided to move his mouth to Gary's ear and whisper: ‘You forgot to draw me tattoo.’

That was a bit unexpected.

‘What!’ Gary looked Mark up and down with shock written all over his face. (Mark had a tattoo!?) ‘You have a tattoo!? Where!?’

Mark licked his lips. He did so deliberately slowly. ‘Right . . . here,’ he said, sounding equally aroused and nervous, and he actually went and slipped his hand underneath the hem of Gary's shirt and placed it somewhere below Gary's belly — right where Mark’s own tattoo should be. ‘It's a _very_ sensitive spot, you know.’

‘I –’Gary didn't know what to say. How could he have missed something as important as a _tattoo_? ‘Wow. Okay. Fuck.’

Their mouths were inches away from touching now.

‘Would you like to see it, Mr. Barlow?’ Mark said, his lips touching Gary's as he spoke. _Fucking hell._

‘Yes. God, yes.’

Mark closed the tiny gap that was left between them and gave Gary his best kiss yet. Again, it was much too short: Gary was just thinking about how good Mark's tongue felt against his when Mark pulled away, blushing and panting.

‘I have to admit, Gaz, I did get me tattoo when I was a lil’ drunk.’

‘O-okay?’

‘You might never look at me in the same way again.’

‘I don't mind.’

Mark smirked. ‘Don't say I didn't warn ya.’

This was actually happening, then.

Mark unbuckled his belt, tantalizingly slowly. Next, he tugged at his zipper, its softly ripping teeth the only sound in the room. He pulled down his trousers so that only a tiny, titillating amount of flesh was visible — including the skin his tattoo had been pressed into.

It turned Gary on more than seeing him half-naked had.

‘It’s a dolphin,’ Gary pointed out in a voice that did not belong to him.

Mark bit his lip, but Gary was too busy staring at Mark’s fingers to notice. ‘You look like you’re not sure whether you want to write a song about it or burn it off of me.’

Gary was silent. Then, ‘Both wrong.’

This wasn’t something Gary usually did. He wasn’t that sort of guy. That is, he wasn’t until he went on his knees and kissed and kissed Mark’s skin until he painted it red.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to take another (short?) break from writing but thanks for reading and leaving comments on this. <3


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